Vale Confidential
by The Wyandotte
Summary: Vale, the capital and namesake of one of four Kingdoms. On the surface, a city of peace...but, as with anything, a closer look reveals the hidden truth and a violent heart. For Ruby Rose and Weiss Schnee, detectives with the VPD, digging into that violent heart is their day job. Revealing that hidden truth is their determination...for Cinder Fall, causing that chaos is everything.
1. Chapter 0-1: Vale Confidential

**A/N:** The site limits story summaries, and fairly so, but it did leave me a little strapped for character space. Brevity is the soul of wit, I know, and I did try so to do the story justice in the official description, in both setting the scene and making it interesting enough to check out, but the full summary below is closer to how, in an ideal world. I'd like to advertise it.

Vale, the capital and namesake of one of the four Kingdoms of Remnant. On the surface, the city is the epitome of peace and prosperity; progress and pedagogy; a lawful metropolis citizens of all four kingdoms can look to as a symbol of hope. Taking a closer look beneath the veneer, however, reveals the hidden truths of a violent and corrupt heart. For Ruby Rose and Weiss Schnee, rookie detectives thrown together by fate and the VPD, digging into that violent heart is their day job, and revealing that hidden truth their determination. But for Cinder Fall, and master thief Roman Torchwick, causing that chaos is everything…

(Will have hints of White Rose throughout.)

Now, then, to the teaser...

* * *

 **Chapter Zero Point One: Vale Confidential**

"I'm sorry for the interruption, Captain, but this fax just came through for you," Ciel said after knocking on the door. She opened it fully and quickly ran in, dropping the page on the captain's desk and scooting back out the door, carefully closing it behind her.

Behind her desk, Captain Goodwitch pushed up her glasses as she read the page, then sighed and handed it to the man sitting in the chair across from her. "What is it?" he asked as he placed his coffee on the table, freeing his hand to take the paper that was offered to him.

"It's confirmation of what you were just telling me, sir," Glynda said. The room was largely silent for a few seconds as he took the necessary time to read the page as well. When he finished, he put it down on the desk.

"I see," he said. "Well, you shouldn't act surprised. Have I ever lied to you before?"

"Is that all you have to say for yourself, sir?" Glynda asked. "You can't fault me for believing this would be the first time. Put yourself in my position."

"I've been in your position before, Captain. I survived. And now look at me."

"Very funny, sir. You should know why this could-and will-pose a problem. Your ivory tower is not so high as to leave you blind to the problems we face here in the dirt."

"And what would you have me do?" the man sitting across from her asked. "I may have the ear of many people, but I can't do anything about budget cuts and personnel assignments. I'm all knowing, not all-powerful," he joked.

Glynda growled. "Sir, you could prevent this if you wanted too."

He shrugged, unconcerned. "Water under the bridge, Captain. I certainly can't prevent anything now; the process has already begun. All I can do is ask that _you_ , the captain in charge of the most efficient precinct in the city, do something about it to ensure its success. View it as a compliment if it'll help you sleep better at night. The brass trusts you. And, as I said earlier, it could have been worse. Both of them could have been rookies, instead of just the one."

"I fail to see how they're not," Glynda replied.

"Well, young Miss Rose has served for the past six months, and right here in your very unit. She has experience, both on the streets and with you."

"She's a glorified taxi driver, that's all. Without any formal training. And the other one doesn't even have that much in her resume."

"Yet they passed all the necessary exams…Perhaps they'll balance each other out, Captain. One has knowledge gained from books and study, the other has the experience of working on the streets. Besides, they both have rich family histories," he said in response.

"And since when has this been something passed down through genetics?" she asked rhetorically. "You could have prevented this."

He stood, placed the printout on her desk and turned his back to her, preparing to leave. "Captain Goodwitch, there are laws in place to prevent abuse of the system, and as regrettable as it is even I must abide by them. You will continue to have my full support in all your investigations, of course, but do not expect me to break the rules for your sake." He reached the door and opened it, pausing in the doorway. "Of course, if you were to, let's say, stretch the rules a little, I'm sure I could convince the attorney general that no harm was done and there isn't any need to press charges against you. He's willing to look the other way from time to time."

"What are you suggesting?"

"Me? I'm not suggesting anything," he said casually as he walked out of the office. "I'm merely asking you to do the best you can with the tools you are given. Even if those tools are untested and unprepared for the challenges ahead of them. _You,_ Captain, are the carpenter, and it is a poor carpenter who blames the tools for her own failure."

"Of course, Commissioner. I'll do my best," she called after him. She looked once again at the paper Ciel had brought in to her. "Dust above, why me?" she asked under her breath. "Two rookie detectives, partnered together? I don't care what her transcripts say, she's not ready for this. And Miss Rose is at least as unqualified. This will not end well…"

* * *

 _Next time, on Vale Confidential:_

(In her office) Glynda: "And this is your first day out of the academy?"

(Wrapping Ruby in a hug) Yang: "Oh, I'm so proud of my little sister!"

(Extending her hand) Ruby: "I'm Ruby! Nice to meet you!"

(Menacingly) Salem: "Remember, Cinder, I'm counting on you…I want that city…"

* * *

 **A/N:** So this chapter is meant as a teaser of what's to come. I'm currently finishing up my first fanfic, _Defender of the People_ , but I've started writing the first few chapters of this as well. I expect to finish _Defender_ early to mid-February, and I want to have a few more chapters written for this before I start just in case so if something were to come up and I don't get anything written for a few weeks, I'd still be able to post something each week. There will be one more teaser chapter coming in a couple of weeks (so, in this case the " _Next time"_ feature is actually for what happens two chapters from now, in the first real chapter) and then more of this beginning, most likely, in March (yeah, that's still some ways away, isn't it?). As of now, I don't expect the story to be any more graphic than your random episode of CSI, Law & Order, or Castle (any of the generic crime shows, really), but there may be times that it goes into some detail. I don't have the full thing written yet; I'm just stating what I expect.

-T.Y.


	2. Chapter 0-2: The Mistralian Falcon

**Chapter Zero Point Two: The Mistralian Falcon**

"Hey! Hey guy! Yeah, I think I'll have another," Mercury shouted across the bar, finally having gotten the bartender's attention. He looked over at his dark-skinned companion. "You know, you could've helped a bit there. They're always quicker to serve the attractive ladies." He took a drink from his fourth beer and leaned his back against the bar, looking out into the dance club.

"So you didn't get served because you're not one of the attractive ones?" Emerald joked. She flashed a grin at the scowl that came to Mercury's face. "Fine. If you'd like, I'd be willing to braid your hair. Would that get him to notice you?" she said dryly, now looking down to her own glass. She stirred it slowly, her index finger moving the straw in a circle around the glass.

"No, I think I'll pass on that." He drank greedily from the bottle, downing half of it in one go. "Ah, this place is definitely not Mistral, that's for sure. Not nearly as much fun here, the weather is stuck somewhere between 'snowsquall' and 'blizzard' every week, and the town is full of stuck up pricks with a rod up their spine. The beer is one of the few things that makes it tolerable."

Emerald smiled as another patron of the club brushed past her, holding up the man's wallet as he walked away, leading his girlfriend to the dance floor. "Oh, I wouldn't say it's all bad here, Merc. There's far more money here than there was in Mistral. And people just don't watch over it like they should." She placed the wallet on the bar and slid it towards Mercury. He picked it up and looked inside, then slammed it on the bar angrily.

"You think you're so funny, don't you?" he asked, glaring at his teammate. "When were you even near me, anyway? You better not have messed with my head."

She picked up her glass and took a sip. "Relax, killer. I gave it back to you, didn't I? I could have kept it." She reached into her pocket and took out another wallet, the one she truly had stolen from the Atlesian man who had walked by her, and tossed that one to Mercury as well. "How about this, then? Your next round is on me." She smiled as a thought hit her. "Rather, it's on that guy. Though I did peak inside, and I have to say, you could easily afford to pay for it yourself. You must have a couple thousand lien in there. Didn't your mother tell you about those large brick buildings with the white marble pillars, lots of men in suits inside, big bags of money in the vault? You know, banks? What you're supposed to use for that."

Mercury caught the wallet easily, and laid it on the bar next to his own. "I suppose it's a good thing that we're friends, huh? But keeping it in the banks around here wouldn't be the wisest move. We'd just end up stealing from ourselves." He took another drink from his beer, finishing it. "What can I say, Em? The work we've been doing pays well, but I almost regret doing such a good job lately. After all, that's what dragged us here." He tried to summon the bartender again, but once more the man ignored his raised hand and the empty bottle. "A little help here, Em?"

"I think you've had enough."

"I've only had four," Mercury countered. "That's why I'm trying to get his attention."

"You've had six."

Mercury made a show of counting on his fingers. "No, those two before we left the hotel don't count. Everyone knows that entering a bar resets your counter."

Emerald wasn't amused. "Cinder wouldn't like it if you went overboard. She might need us for something."

"Do I look like I care what that virago thinks about how I spend my free time?" Mercury asked.

"Don't talk about her that way. You owe her loyalty and respect," Emerald said through gritted teeth.

"I don't owe her anything." He placed the bottle on the bar. "Especially right now. I'm off the clock. You're the one that follows her around like a lost little puppy. Where has that gotten you so far, anyway? You're here, in a night club, on a Friday night, with me, stirring that same drink around for hours without actually having any of it. Is this where you want to be right now? Your puppy dog act certainly hasn't gotten you in-"

"Shut up," Emerald growled, interrupting him. Her red eyes flared slightly.

Mercury ignored the warning. He'd had just enough to care even less than normal about propriety or politeness. "You're no better off than you were years ago when she found you, on the streets of some god-forsaken-city, hungry and alone. You're still hungry. You're still alone. You've just traded one appetite for another."

"Shut up," she said. She dropped her hands to the twin weapons strapped to her lower back, glancing from side to side to see if any of the club's security had noticed the tension rising between them. It didn't seem they had, but a few of the other patrons were moving away, so she figured it was only a matter of time before one of the hulking bouncers peppered around the dancefloor showed up.

"Alright. I will." Mercury gave up trying to get the bartender's attention and slipped both wallets into his pocket. "I'm just in this for the money, Emerald. As long as she's paying, I'm listening. But guess what? She's not paying me right now. So if I want to drink more, I will, if not here than somewhere else. If you want to chase after her approval, you do that on your own time. Don't drag me along with you as your wingman." He was silent for a few minutes, staring at Emerald as she continued to stir the drink before her. She finally raised it to her lips, but before she could take a sip a smile broke across her face and she had to place it back down on the bar. "What is it?" Mercury asked, looking around worriedly.

"'That virago?' What picture book did you pick that one out of? 'See Spot Insult?'" She tried to take a drink again, but ended up coughing as she swallowed wrong.

"I do know things, you know," Mercury said under his breath, biting his lip to keep his own smile from showing. He looked around the club, then sighed and stood. "Come on. You're never going to finish that, and if you're so hell-bent on stopping me from having another, we might as well leave." He picked up his coat from the back of the tall bar chair near him and put it on, zipping it up tightly. "Hopefully she'll get her next assignment soon, and we can get out of this place and back to Mistral. Or Vacuo. They don't even have a winter, you know. Just imagine all those lovely ladies walking around without having to cover all their skin. It's the opposite there. They see how much skin they can leave visible."

"What about Vale?"

"There's nothing there for _her_ to bother with, so no reason for us to be sent there."

"I don't know," Emerald said, grabbing and donning her own winter coat. "The fact that there isn't anything there _yet_ could be exactly why we get sent. As you said, we've been doing a really good job lately. She might consider it a promotion of sorts."

"Yeah, whatever. Anything's better than here."

"Oh, and by the way, that's a mighty generous tip you left that bartender."

Mercury's right hand slapped against his jacket, feeling the pocket where he had put his wallet. Feeling the pocket, and not the wallet… "Damn it, Emerald!" he shouted, as she laughed and handed him his wallet once again.

* * *

 _Next time, on Vale Confidential: -Chapter One: Red, Hot and Blue-_

Salem: "I did not _ask_ you to be here. I _ordered_ you to be here."

(Angrily) Weiss: "You're the one who ran into _me_."

(Counting on her fingers) Ruby: "Yang, those are all the same thing."

Ciel: "Excuse me, Captain Goodwitch. This just came across the wire for you."

* * *

 **A/N:** So, this is the second part of the teaser for the upcoming crime/drama/procedural RWBY fanfic _Vale Confidential._ I hope that you've enjoyed it, and please check back in a few weeks (as I said in the last chapter, most likely beginning in March) for more.

До скорой встречи!

-T.Y.


	3. Chapter 1: Red, Hot and Blue

**Chapter One: Red, Hot and Blue**

And how all things that seem untameable,

Not to be checked and not to be confined,

Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill;

Time, earth, and fire, the ocean and the wind,

And all their shapes, and man's imperial will;-

And other scrolls whose writings did unbind

The inmost lore of love-let the profane

Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.

 _-The Witch of Atlas,_ by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published 1824-

* * *

The polished black limousine ground to a halt, the brakes working silently even as the tires created a satisfying _crunch_ as they rolled over the day-old snow that blanketed the ground of the abandoned railyard, the fine white powder that had fallen yesterday now covered with a thin layer of ice. There was a slight _click_ as the doors unlocked, and the tall woman standing alone in the bright morning sun opened one of the rear doors and entered, glad to be out of biting cold and wind that was Atlas in the throes of winter.

"It is good that you weren't late," said the original occupant of the car, her voice soft but carrying an unmistakable edge. _Do not cross me_ was the unspoken message the voice conveyed with every utterance.

Generating a small flame to reheat her hands, Cinder Fall gave a slight smile at the older woman. "Of course, I wouldn't dream of it. Why did you ask for me?" she asked, manipulating the flame unconsciously while studying the nearly unreadable face of her employer. The flame provided the only light in the otherwise pitch-black limo, the windows tinted and blocking out the early morning sunlight.

"I did not _ask_ you to be here," the older woman corrected **.** "I _ordered_ you to be here. It is important that you understand the difference. Do you?" She was still soft-spoken, forcing Cinder to concentrate fully to hear her voice, and outwardly was calm, but her voice was noticeably more threatening. Cinder swallowed nervously. She had served the family loyally, and with distinction, for several years now, and knew the woman sitting across from her trusted her to get whatever job she was assigned done.

She also knew that the woman viewed her, as she did all her underlings, as easily displanted, mere cogs in a larger machine that could be discarded when broken and replaced with something, or someone, newer. "Yes, ma'am, I understand," Cinder answered. It was best to use short, direct sentences when speaking with Salem. She had a way of twisting one's words around and using it against them. A lesson Cinder had learned early in her career, and one that had nearly cost her life. The flame in her hands flickered at the memory.

As expected, the short answer seemed to placate Salem. "That is good. You're here this morning because I have an assignment for you. It will take you out of Atlas for several months at least, possibly longer if you have trouble completing it." She leaned forward and placed a sealed envelope on Cinder's lap, laying it across her knees, then leaned back and gestured with her left hand for the younger woman to open it. Cinder did so immediately, using a sharpened fingernail to slice through the paper and reveal the contents. She was silent for a few moments as she scanned the documents neatly contained inside. She was familiar already with some of the names included in the dossiers, and they fit in with what the initial page had revealed as her mission, but she was surprised when she came to the last page and read the name: _Roman Torchwick._

She looked up from the files and met Salem's eye, her shock clearly visible on her face. Her employer stared at her, not bothering to explain herself. _She doesn't have too,_ Cinder thought. _She's the boss._ Finally, though, Cinder grew tired of waiting and had no choice but to voice her concerns aloud.

"Ma'am, you do understand this man is untrustworthy?"

"Of course, but that is also the reason I'm sending you to take care of it, instead of one of my other lieutenants. Whether you like it or not, Mr. Torchwick is the best thief in Vale, and the crew he runs with is far more than merely capable. I trust that you can wrap him around your pretty little finger…you've done it before, if I remember correctly."

Cinder blushed at the implication, and her own mind flashed back to the last time she had seen Roman, and more specifically to the state she had left him in. _He was handcuffed to the bed in a run-down hotel room, the key thrown out the window, screaming obscenities as loud as he could, angry at me for leaving him like that and angry at himself for trusting me._ "That's exactly why I'm not sure that I'm the best one for the job, ma'am. He isn't going to be happy to see me again." _And I'm not interested in seeing him again, either._

Any warmth that had been contained in Salem's eyes was extinguished, making the cold smile on her face even more chilling as she leaned forward and traced a finger along the curves of Cinder's body, starting at the outside of her thigh and teasing her way upwards slowly. Cinder tensed at the contact, but didn't move to pull away, knowing that to do so would risk Salem becoming angrier with her than she already was. "So, make him happy to see you," Salem said, her finger coming to a rest below Cinder's chin and lifting the younger woman's face so she would no longer be looking down, but directly at her employer. Suddenly, she pulled her hand back and slapped Cinder across the cheek. "I thought I made it clear that I wasn't asking," she said, pointing at her. She leaned back into the comfortable seat of the limo and crossed her legs elegantly. "Do you understand?" she asked.

"Of course," Cinder said, resisting the urge to rub her injured cheek. Instead, she raised her arm and looked at her watch from the corner of her eye, noting the time. _Ten fifteen, wonderful. There's still plenty of time left in the day._ "I'll gather Emerald and Mercury and we'll board an airship for Vale today."

"Wonderful," Salem said pleasantly, acting as if she hadn't just assaulted the younger woman. "Remember, Cinder, I'm counting on you. There are so few capable women in this line of work, and I would hate to see one less...I'll expect regular reports regarding your progress, and I'll expect them to start soon."

Cinder realized the conversation was finished, and opened the door to exit the car. She sucked in a deep breath as the cold once again hit her, and she flared a little of the fire inside herself to combat the elements. _Maybe it won't be so damn cold in Vale,_ she thought, trying to focus on the positive side of the situation she found herself in. She turned to close the door, but was stopped by Salem speaking up one last time.

"Remember, Cinder, _whatever_ it takes to assure his cooperation. I want that city, and to do that, we need him. _Whatever it takes._ " She raised her hand and pressed the intercom button on the ceiling of the limo, giving orders to her driver.

Cinder nodded again, barely managing to choke out a few words. "I understand," she said meekly, closing the door. She stepped away from the door and the limousine pulled away, crunching through the snow and ice as it made its way back towards the city center. Cinder immediately made her way to where her own car was waiting a few yards away, already talking into her scroll as she sat behind the driver seat. She had seen what had happened to others who had failed Salem before, and she didn't want to repeat their mistakes. "Yeah, Merc?" she said into the phone, glad that the man was awake and sober enough to talk to. "You and Em need to grab your ready bags. We're leaving. Now. Meet me at the airport in thirty."

* * *

"You've got this, Weiss," the white-haired girl said to herself in the mirror. "It's just like you've trained for." She splashed a little cold water on her face and made sure that her hair was tied neatly to the side before leaving the bathroom and entering the main room of her new apartment. "There's no reason to be nervous. Everyone has a first day, right? Even Papa had a first day at work." The thought of her father soured her previously excited attitude, causing a frown to form on her face. "I'll be fine," she said to herself. "I'm a Schnee, after all."

She busied herself for several minutes making sure the room was clean and spotless, putting everything in its proper place. Remotes on the end table, couch cushions fluffed and pressed neatly into the back, pillows placed on each of the chairs, coasters stacked in the center of the fruitwood coffee table, and the area rug that dominated the center of the hardwood floor vacuumed. Satisfied that her apartment had been cleaned to her high standards, she once again checked herself in a mirror, this time one by the door, making sure no remnant of the temporary disconcert remained before she made sure her outfit was as tidy and wrinkle-free as her pale face. She frowned at the scar and lightly rested a finger on it, wishing it away for the thousandth time. A wish, only. She had been given the chance to have it removed long before, and had declined only to spite her father. She would never give him the satisfaction of admitting he was right. Her hand leaving her face, she smoothed the front and sides of her blue bolero before deciding to throw on a snow-white pea coat as well. _It is winter,_ she thought, _even if it isn't nearly as cold here as it is in Atlas._ Winter in Atlas had started months ago, several weeks before the cold winds had blown their way south to Vale, and would continue long after Vale had transitioned into springtime. _Not nearly as cold is still cold, though,_ she reasoned, sure that she would appreciate the warmth the heavy wool coat would offer her.

Thinking of her homeland made Weiss briefly homesick, but she pushed the warm memories of a childhood spent aside, replacing them with the multitudinous and more recent memories of why she had decided to leave. _I couldn't stay there any longer, not after what he tried to do. Besides, even without that, I had always wanted to be like Winter, and I couldn't do that if I stayed._

 _I would never amount to anything if I had stayed._

Weiss grabbed her keys from the hook by the door and exited the apartment, ensuring the door was properly locked and the alarm was set before walking down the hallway to the elevator. It didn't matter to her that her building had a doorman, or that it was in a comparatively upscale neighborhood of one of the safer cities in Vale. Weiss didn't want to run the risk of being robbed. She had spent nearly everything she had on the safety deposit and other standard fees associated with a new apartment and the furnishings for it, and she couldn't count on any more money coming in from her parents, and she could ill afford to replace any stolen or lost possessions. _No, from now on I'll only have what I work for and earn for myself._ A frightening reality. A new reality.

A reality that was why she was so excited and nervous to be starting her new job. _I can't afford to fail, or to mess up,_ she thought as she called for the elevator. She tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for it to arrive, idly checking her scroll for any messages in the meantime. There weren't any, which didn't surprise her terribly. _I don't know anyone, or have any friends. My parents don't want to talk to me, and Winter is too busy with her own work to coddle me by checking in every day._ Still, she had hoped for some word of encouragement on her first day with the Vale Police Department. _Winter had called when I had graduated from the Academy, with honors, and was named an inspector straightaway, my test scores far exceeding the threshold set for the three-year beat exemption._ The memory of her proud sister brought a smile to her face. _I'm taking quite the trip down memory lane,_ she thought idly. The honor of graduating top of her class belied another reason to be nervous: she would be only the third inspector in the department's history to be appointed directly out of an academy. A true rookie, with no experience on the street.

 _I'll do fine. I'm a Schnee, after all._

Weiss entered the elevator and pushed the button for ground level, standing against the back as the doors closed and she began her descent. None of the buildings in Vale, except for the tower at the center of Beacon, were very tall, and her apartment, while being on the top floor, was only eight stories above the ground. She was glad the elevator ride didn't take very long. The Muzak the elevator played on a constant loop was grating to the young woman's classically trained ears. She was glad that no one else was calling for the elevator and forcing it to stop on every floor, and as soon as she reached the lobby she hurried out of the elevator, past the doorman without a second glance as he held the door open for her, and into the cold of the city. She clutched her coat closer to herself as she amended an earlier thought. _Maybe it is nearly as cold as Atlas._

There wasn't time for her to linger debating the average temperature of her new home compared to her old, though, as she had long ago determined that she would _not_ be late for her first day. In fact, she would be there several minutes early, eager to make a good first impression on her new colleagues. While the police headquarters were on the opposite side of the city, adjacent to the city hall and the courthouse, Weiss had been assigned to a precinct that was much closer to her own home, so her walk would only take a few minutes.

She stopped by a coffee shop briefly, eager to get a feel for the community she had only been a part of for a week. The baristas inside hurried to fill her order for her, and Weiss stood off to side, unsure of how to begin a conversation with any of them. One handed her the coffee, and she left after paying, upset at herself for her failure to engage them politely. _They were too busy to talk, that's all,_ she reasoned with herself, trying to assuage her guilt at failing herself and ignoring the fact that she had been the only customer. _Maybe tomorrow it'll be quieter, less busy, and I can introduce myself to them then._ That sounded better to her. _There is always tomorrow._

Introspective as she was, she failed to look around the corner and collided with a red blur, tumbling to the ground awkwardly, her coffee cup losing its lid and spilling out onto the cement sidewalk. Weiss jumped to her feet as quickly as she could, and looked around to see what had caused her to fall, left hand dropping to the hilt of her rapier as her instincts led her to believe she was possibly under attack. A few feet away, still on the sidewalk, was a girl about her age dressed in a red tracksuit, clutching her ankle and grimacing in pain. _That's what you get for running into me,_ Weiss thought angrily. _You made me spill my coffee._ She looked over herself and let out a sigh of relief when she realized she hadn't spilled any of the coffee on herself. _Walking into work with a stained coat would_ not _be the first impression that I want to make._

She took a few steps forward and stomped her foot on the ground, drawing the attention of the short-haired woman in front of her. Able to inspect the girl's face now that she looked up at her, her silver eyes intrigued Weiss. _That's a unique color,_ Weiss thought. _It's like the sky after a storm._ "Watch where you're going!" Weiss shouted at her, even as she knelt to help inspect her ankle. "It's dangerous to be running around corners like that. You're lucky that I wasn't seriously hurt."

The girl flashed a quick grin and began to stand, gingerly testing her ankle to make sure it could support her weight. "Watch where I'm going?" she asked, "You're the one who ran into _me._ If you had been over to the right like you're supposed to be, we would've walked right by each other without any problem, just like the dozens of others that I've already ran by today! Sorry about your coffee, I really am, but this one is on you." She looked at the tracker on her wrist. "Damn. Now my time's all thrown off, too. This just keeps getting better and better," she said sarcastically. "Thanks for nothing. If I'm late for work because of this, I'm going to be extremely upset at you." She didn't give Weiss a chance to say anything more, instead resuming her run, disappearing shortly around the next block.

"Yeah, I'm the one at fault," Weiss snorted. She grabbed her coffee cup of the ground and slammed it down into a nearby trashcan. _Maybe I should go back to the coffee shop_ , she thought, looking back around the corner to the shop only a block away. _What time is it?_ She looked at her scroll and decided she'd have barely enough time to go back if she wanted to be early. _I'd better not risk it,_ she decided, continuing her walk to the precinct.

She saw several police cars parked out front as she approached, each one left with the engine running in case an emergency called them away at short notice. _That's a waste of money and resources,_ she thought, even as she understood the usefulness of the practice. Several of the officers were standing around outside, their uniforms not nearly as neat or well-cared for as the expensive clothing Weiss covered herself with. Some were barely standing up, their eyes glazed over; their expressions dull. _They must be the last ones remaining from the graveyard shift,_ she thought, she hoped. That would at least explain the condition of their clothing. _They can't possibly show up to work looking like that. It's so unprofessional!_ Weiss added it to the list of things she would change once she was promoted to captain.

She crossed the courtyard and walked up the brick stairs and entered the precinct, stopping in the center of the lobby, standing on the Vale Police Department shield beautifully painted on the marble floor. She closed her eyes and listened to the noise around her, dreamily imagining the perfect life she had planned for herself here. She tried to focus on each of the voices in turn, intruding silently upon the conversations playing out around her. Some officers discussed the week's fighting tournament standings; others asked each other what they had been up to over the weekend. One of the desk sergeants chatted up a secretary, while another was more focused on the arrest report that he was checking for errors. Several criminals, not yet moved to the holding cells, shouted out claims of their innocence, or how they needed the bathroom, or how they were victims of 'the man'. Her home, her private school, the elite academy she had attended- they had held none of the real-world warmth that already flowed into her from the station.

"Detective Schnee, my office, please," came an authoritative voice from above. Weiss opened her eyes and looked up barely in time to see the speaker turn her back and enter her office. _That must be Captain Goodwitch_ , she thought. She had looked up the woman's service history as best as she could to try and get a feel for the woman she would be serving under. One of the idiosyncrasies of the VPD is that they assigned new hires blindly and randomly: there was a panel that oversaw the interview and hiring process, and they decided which precinct, if any, you would be assigned to. For most, the first time they met their supervisor was the morning they started. _I can't imagine anything like that being tried at the SDC,_ Weiss thought. She added it to her list. _You need to know the people working under you; having them assigned at random is foolishness._

She walked forward and entered the main room of the precinct, looking around for the stairway that would lead her to the second floor and the captain's office. Several of the other officers and detectives looked at her with interested expressions, but none offered their help. _It must be somewhere to the side or the back,_ she reasoned, starting forward with as much confidence as she could muster, a confidence born from years of getting exactly what she wanted, when she wanted it. _Remember, you're Weiss Schnee, and you've earned this. Father most definitely wasn't involved in pulling any strings to get you assigned here._ She smiled as she realized that, if anything, he would have tried to ensure that she _wasn't_ hired as a detective. She had earned this.

 _I am good. I'm a Schnee, after all._

She saw information signs on the back wall, past the open cubicles of the main room and the half dozen or so enclosed offices of the senior investigators and made her way to them. There was an arrow pointing down, with the words "VPD Testing Laboratory, Refined Criminalistics," "Garage/Rapid Response SWAT/SPU," and "Morgue." Next to the arrow pointing to the stairs going up were the words "Administration," "Captain Goodwitch," and "Bullhead/Roof Access." _I understand having a crime lab here, but the morgue too? That seems…grim. Shouldn't they have a separate facility for taking care of that?_ Maybe they were shorter on money here in Vale than they let on to the public… _Atlas would certainly have separate facilities for everything, and the top of the line at that._ She laid her hand on the railing and began to climb the stairs quickly, running up them excitedly. _It's coming true, finally. I'm here. Nothing can stop that now._

She paused for a moment at the door to Captain Goodwitch's office, wishing she had a mirror to once again check her appearance and ensure that it was still perfect. _This is your one and only shot to make the proper first impression,_ she thought. _You're going to go into that office, salute her crisply, and wow her with how much you know already. You're going to make her understand how lucky she is to have you assigned here._ She reached out her hand and rapped her knuckles on the doorframe.

"Come in," the captain said from behind the door. Weiss gripped the doorknob and took in a deep breath before twisting it and pushing it open. She entered the small and cluttered, but clean, office. "Shut the door behind you." She did so, and then turned to get her first good look at her captain.

Captain Glynda Goodwitch of the Vale Police Department was older than she appeared, about the same age as Weiss' father...but again, you wouldn't know that just by a cursory glance at her. Obviously the woman took great care in her appearance, the crisp lines of her pencil skirt and the solitary curl that escaped her professional bun indicating a morning routine that probably took hours to achieve, despite its simple appearance. "You're Miss Schnee?" she asked, not looking up from the mess of paperwork already covering her desk.

"Detective Schnee, yes, ma'am," Weiss said, standing at attention. Still, Glynda didn't look up.

"And this is your first day out of the academy?" she asked, turning over one page and beginning to read through the next, signing her name at the bottom.

"Well, technically, I've been out for a few weeks now," Weiss corrected her. She nearly jumped as Glynda slammed the pen down and looked up.

"Miss Schnee, no one likes a know-it-all," she said sternly. "When I ask whether or not this is your first day, I meant it- as you well know- to mean your first day as an officer of the law. Now, is this your first day with a police force outside of school?"

 _Damn,_ Weiss thought. She had only said two sentences to her, and already she had succeeded in making her supervisor angry. "Yes, ma'am, this is my first day," she answered.

Glynda sighed and rubbed her temples. "I don't appreciate being saddled with two rookies at once. Police work is dangerous business, even for experienced veterans…if the commissioner had told me that I'd only have her to worry about I would've been upset enough, but at least she has _some_ experience on the front lines. You look like you stepped out of a store display." She looked Weiss over from head to toe. "I don't recommend high heels for daily use," she said disapprovingly. "They're a pain to chase suspects in, and wearing them day after day after day will cause you no end of blisters. You look surprised? Did you not expect to be on your feet all day?"

Weiss shook her head. "No, it's not that…"

Glynda looked upset. "Well, what is it? Speak up, girl."

"I didn't expect to be the one chasing the suspects. Isn't that what the officers are for?"

Glynda nearly let out a laugh. "Miss Schnee, I don't know what the academies in Atlas are teaching nowadays, but I can assure you that attitude will not endear you to the officers you'll be working with here in Vale. They are there to assist you, but do not feel that you can order them around to do whatever little things that you can't be bothered to for yourself. They'll only respect those that have earned it- that goes double for you, showing up as you did without ever serving as part of the rank and file."

"I…I understand, ma'am," Weiss said timidly. _This is not going at all as I had expected,_ she thought.

"I expect that there was much that was left out of your elite, private-school education in Atlas," Glynda continued. "And frankly, I don't have the time to fill in all the gaps left as a result. Nor do I have the interest. You will simply have to do your best to learn as you go. The people of Vale are counting on you, so don't mess up. Now as far as partners go…" There was a knock on the door that interrupted her. "Ah, speak of the devil and she appears. Come in, Ruby," she called out.

Weiss stood to the side and twisted her torso so as to see the person coming through the door. _This will be my partner,_ she thought. _I hope that it's someone wise, who can mentor me, who I can impress with how quick I am._ She saw a foot first, wearing, she noticed, not heels but simple combat boots, followed by a leg…the hem of a skirt…the upper body…the face…

"You!" Ruby said.

"You!" Weiss shouted at the same time.

"I take it you girls have already met?" Glynda asked, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

* * *

"Oh, I'm so proud of my little sister," Yang said, grabbing Ruby in a bear hug and squeezing her tight. "Are you excited for your first day on the new job, or are you excited for your first day on the new job, or are you excited for your first day on the new job? Tell me the truth now."

Ruby counted off on her fingers. "Yang, those are all the same thing," she said, pulling away from her sister. "Coco, did Yang get a concussion yesterday?"

From across the ready room, their lieutenant looked up from the fashion magazine she was reading. "Not that I know of, Ruby, but she's hard headed enough to have gotten one and not told us." She pulled down her sunglasses and looked over them at Yang. "Those regulations are there for a reason, Yang. They're even named after you. Why do you ask?"

"Well, she's not making any sense over here…"

"Oh, Ruby, she's just so excited for you she can't contain it. We all are, right?" Velvet said, looking around at the other members of the Strategic Pursuit Unit. The Faunus adjusted her cap, making sure her long rabbit ears fit through the neatly cut holes in the top properly. "You can't blame her for being excited. You get to skip the academy _and_ the required three years as a patrol officer, after you already got assigned straight to the SPU from basically off the street. Seriously, Ruby, who do you know?" Velvet walked over to Ruby and wrapped her in a hug of her own, sad to see the young woman she had come to love as a sister leaving the burrow.

"Well, our uncle teaches at Signal, but that shouldn't help me too much. And our father was an officer, but he's retired now, so I don't know how much say he has in the hiring and firing of people."

"Ruby, whatever you have, you deserve," Yatsuhashi said, his soft voice not matching at all his giant stature. He leaned over the room's pinball machine, deftly tapping the controls on the side. "You weren't _given_ anything here. We didn't take it easy on you just because you were younger or smaller than us. The criminals we chased after certainly didn't take it easy on you. You still managed to shine. Your moving on is proof that our superiors have noticed what we've known for the last few months."

"What he said," Coco called out from the table. She folded the magazine and put it down on the table. "Okay, executive decision. We need one last Argent Eagles group hug for good luck. Fox, that means you, too. Get off the couch and get your ass over here or I'll make it redder than the hair on your head. Ruby's leaving us, and we can't let her go without a proper goodbye."

"Oh, Chief, you always know just what to say to motivate a man," Fox said as he pulled his legs up, tucking them against his chest before jumping to his feet. "But my hair is orange, just so you know. At least, that's what my stylist says. She isn't lying to me, is she?"

Ruby giggled as the banter continued on between the squad mates. _This was so nice, being a part of this family for the last six months,_ she thought, as all five of her companions wrapped her in a hug. She had never before felt like she was a part of something, never felt herself a part of such perfect unity. When she had first interviewed for a position with the VPD, she had never held onto the hope that she would have been assigned to the elite tactical unit her sister was a part of…but then she had been. When Yang and Coco had encouraged her to submit an application for her true dream, being a detective, everyone had taken it upon themselves to help her study for the exams she would need to pass to earn an exemption. She had lost count of the number of times Fox had laid on the ground pretending to be the murder victim, or how often Coco had ambushed her with a series of flashcards and refused to let her go until she answered all the questions right. She laughed as she remembered one time, only the day before the exams, when the questions had been orders of magnitude more difficult and obscure than normal and she had _really_ needed to use the bathroom, making it hard to concentrate.

"Oh, Ruby, I'm so proud of you," Yang whispered into her ear. "And I know your mom would be too."

Ruby wiped a tear from her eye at the mention of her mother. _Mom, I hope you're smiling down at me,_ she thought.

A recurring beep brought everyone out of the hug, and Ruby looked around in confusion. "That alarm is new," she said. "What crime is that one for?" She looked at Yang first, who merely shook her head, and then Coco and Velvet. Neither of them seemed to have any idea either.

"Ruby, that's for you," Yatsu said. "I had a feeling we'd get all touchy-feely and lose track of the time, especially when you came in from your run a few minutes later than you should have." He immediately blanched, realizing he had just outed Ruby for being late, and sent a guilty look at Coco, who shrugged it off.

"Whatever, I'm not her supervisor anymore," the lieutenant said. "If she's a few minutes late, that's on the Witch, not me."

"Anyway, you need to get upstairs," Yatsuhashi said. "Captain Goodwitch wanted to see you at 9:15. You don't want to be late." Like always, he refrained from using the team's nickname for the captain. _She's strict, but that's just because she has a lot riding on her,_ Ruby thought. She had never liked the nickname either. She couldn't know for sure if the captain had put in a good word for her with the review board, but she assumed that she had. _Who else would have recommended me when I'm still so young and inexperienced?_

Yang took one last opportunity to ruffle her hair, before patting her on the back and nearly throwing her through the open door. "Get on, you little scamp," she called out as Ruby ran up the stairs.

 _It's so good Yatsu is always looking out for us,_ Ruby thought as she took the stairs two at a time. _I was so upset from that run-in with the rich girl that after my shower in the locker room, I completely forgot about the time. Normally we just sit around the ready room all day hoping that no one calls for us, so I completely forgot that I can't do that anymore._ She cursed herself for being so forgetful. _I can't afford to make a mistake already; I'm on thin enough ice as it is._ She came to the door and knocked. _Just in time,_ she thought.

"…Speak of the devil and she appears. Come in, Ruby," Captain Goodwitch's voice came through the closed door.

Ruby pushed the door open and began to walk into the room. Her eyes looked downward, noticing first the heels of the other woman waiting inside. _I thought I'd be meeting my partner,_ she thought, disappointed. _But no way would a detective be wearing lady stilts like that._ Still, they looked familiar. She looked up, noting the leg…the hem of a skirt…a blue jacket…then a face, meeting the blue eyes of the woman the heels belonged too.

"You!" Weiss shouted, at the same time Ruby said the same.

"I take it you girls have already met?" Glynda asked, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "That'll make things easier."

"Actually, Captain, we only bumped into each other," Ruby said, letting out a slight giggle. _Try and make the best of it, Ruby,_ she encouraged herself. _One run in shouldn't ruin a chance at a friendship._ "I'm Ruby," she said cheerfully, extending her hand to the girl. "It's nice to meet you!"

"Humph. Weiss Schnee," the other said coldly, not accepting the handshake. "And you almost made me late for my first day." Weiss turned up her nose and looked away from Ruby, her long hair flipping to the side at the movement.

" _You_ almost made _me_ late for work," Ruby corrected. "You ran into me." _I hope that didn't sound mean,_ she thought. _I want to be firm, and accurate, but not standoffish._ Still, she couldn't leave it like that. "And I already said I was sorry."

"You didn't mean it. You were more upset over the coffee being spilt than you were over knocking me to the ground." Weiss continued to look away from Ruby, clearly angry at her current situation.

"Well coffee is a nice pick me up," Ruby said quietly.

"See what I mean!"

"Ladies!" snapped Glynda, once again calling for attention by slamming her hand on the desk. A few of the papers stacked on it were lifted by the force of the blow and flew into the air before gently gliding down and landing on the floor. "You can probably already tell that this is already not an ideal situation for any of us. We would normally never dream of assigning two rookies as partners, but at the moment we are suffering from a new round of budget cuts and forced retirements, so we don't have much choice. Suffice it to say that you _will not_ be given a second chance if you can't make things work, both between yourselves and in your eventual investigations. Ruby, you'll be lucky to go back to the SPU, and Miss Schnee, you'll be lucky to get a recommendation for wherever it is you go next. You ladies _are_ partners, from now on, so I suggest you play the blame game on your own time. You've been assigned desks on the ground floor, go to them and get yourselves set up. Weiss, you'll need to get in touch with IT and have them set you up an account; Ruby, yours should have transferred over from SPU." There was another knock on the door. "Come in," she said.

The door opened and a neatly dressed secretary walked in. "Excuse me, Captain Goodwitch," the girl said with a slight accent. "This just came across the wire for you. A murdered Faunus was found this morning in the Salmagundi District." She laid the paper down on the desk and scurried out.

"Thank you, Ciel," Glynda called after her secretary. She picked up the piece of paper and scanned it. "Setting up your desks will have to wait. You ladies just drew the short straw. Have at it." She held the paper across the desk and Weiss reached forward to take it. "Dismissed," she said bluntly, returning her attention to the paperwork on her desk. "Fill me in by the end of the day."

* * *

"I'm sorry for earlier," Ruby said, meekly. They had been driving in one of the VPD cars reserved for the use by detectives. It had been a quiet and tense ride so far. "The park has a path for runners, but it's on the opposite side of the city, so I don't like to use it, and it's very important to stay active, especially in this line of work, so I need to make sure I do something, and I like to run, because it clears my mind, so that's what I try to do, even though I don't go to the park-"

"Stop," Weiss commanded, releasing her death grip on one of the SUV's armrests temporarily, holding up her hand for a second to reinforce her words. She immediately grabbed back at it as Ruby made a hard left down a side street. "You're rambling, and I don't like that. Just say what you have to say."

"I'm not good at people-ing. I'm just trying to say I'm sorry." She pressed down on the accelerator, pushing the car through an intersection as the light changed to from yellow to red.

 _I swear, if I get out of this car alive…_ "Well, I probably should have been looking up, not down at the ground, and I'm sorry that I knocked you to the ground. You weren't hurt too badly, were you?" _Try, Weiss, try to make this work. You heard Glynda. This is your one shot. You can't go crawling back to Father because you failed. "_ Now can you drive a little slower!" Weiss said, her knuckles and face whiter than usual. _I don't appreciate not being the one in control._

Ruby looked away from the road and smiled. "I said I was a professional, didn't I? I was the driver for the Strategic Pursuit Unit. It was my job to go fast." She looked back at the road and let out a yelp as she narrowly avoided rear-ending the car in front of them. "Relax, relax," she said. "We're almost there. The Salmagundi cuts through the center of the precinct, and it's not too big a district. We're maybe two, three blocks away." She pumped on the brakes as they drew closer to their destination and signaled her turn, pulling the car to an easy stop. She unbuckled herself, shutting off the police siren but leaving the lights on, and hopped out of the car, her overt enthusiasm not allowing her to answer Weiss' question about her welfare.

"Next time, I drive," Weiss said weakly. "That is, if I'm ever stupid enough to get in a car with you again." Her legs were wobbly as she opened her own door and got out, standing on the sidewalk shakily. "Which way do we go from here?" she asked, the world around her spinning.

"Well, we follow the crime tape, obviously," Ruby said, leading the way. Weiss followed behind her. "Captain Goodwitch said we're both rookies, so I'm going to guess that you're fresh out of the Academy, right, Weiss? Have you ever seen a dead body in person?" When Weiss didn't answer right away, Ruby continued. "It isn't pretty, but the sight of it isn't the worst thing. The worst and the first thing that'll hit you is the smell. There isn't anything I can do to prepare you for it, but know this: if it starts to get to be too much for you, don't be afraid to leave the scene. Like, immediately. One of the last things we need is accusations about corrupting the integrity of the investigation by fouling up the crime scene with whatever you had for breakfast. The defense attorneys love to throw things like that around, and the prosecutors hate having to try and get their objections overruled in court." Ruby nodded politely to a uniformed officer that held the tape up for them to walk under.

"Is that all?" Weiss asked sarcastically. "I've seen plenty of dead bodies during my training, and I've never had a problem with them before. It will not start now."

Ruby came to the door of the apartment building and stopped, one foot inside. "There's a difference between _seeing_ and _smelling._ Remember, everyone has a first day. If it's too bad, don't be afraid of how you'll look to the other officers. They'd rather you leave then make a mess they have to clean up. Plus, you'll get a nickname like Vomit Girl or something, and you'll never live it down. I don't want people saying I'm partnered with Vomit Girl." She walked inside, and Weiss followed.

* * *

 _Next time, on Vale Confidential: -Chapter Two: Animal Kingdom-_

(To herself) Weiss: "Whoever made you the boss?"

(Outside a third-floor apartment) Ruby: "Weiss, do you know where we are?"

(Sitting behind her desk) Glynda: "Do you know why we assign detectives to work in pairs?"

(Sitting at their desks) Weiss: "If we're going to solve this, then we're going to solve it as partners."


	4. Chapter 2: Animal Kingdom

**Chapter Two: Animal Kingdom**

 **A/N:** In this AU, I'm treating the Faunus in general more as immigrants from another country (Menagerie) rather than your run-of-the-mill citizens of Vale, meaning they have their own language and culture (and, yes, their animal characteristics). As with any immigrant population, there may be some who have not learned the language of the country to which they have immigrated. It seems reasonable to me, then, that depending on the Faunus, some may speak a language that would be foreign to the residents of Vale, and that will be reflected in the narrative. As I am in the process of learning Russian, that is the language they will be using. How that will be presented (for example, regarding translation of the conversation) will change depending on the situation it is in. See the end for more notes on the matter.

-T.Y.

* * *

 _Previously, on Vale Confidential:_

(Stomping her foot) Weiss: "Watch where you're going! You're lucky that I wasn't seriously hurt."

(Sitting at her desk) Glynda: "Miss Schnee, I can assure you that that attitude will not endear you to the officer's you'll be working with. They'll only respect those that have earned it."

Ruby: "I'm sorry for earlier."

Glynda: "Two rookie detectives, partnered together? This will not end well…"

* * *

"Has the doc given the all clear yet?" Ruby asked, kneeling at the feet of the body. She pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves, matching the similar pair already covering her shoes. She looked up at one of the uniforms standing guard over the scene, but he merely shrugged.

"I don't know, ma'am," he said politely, "but I doubt it. She only got here a few minutes ago. You must have raced here yourselves to arrive so quickly." Ruby looked down, away from him and back at the body. Her fingers twitched, eager to start her own examination of the body and its belongings.

 _If only you knew how fast she drove,_ Weiss thought as she looked around in confusion. _I don't see a doctor_. "Well, where is she, then? Does she expect us to stand around here forever?" She kept an eye on Rose, making sure her over-eager partner didn't overstep her bounds by touching the body before it was cleared. _Someone has to be the adult here._

The officer shrugged. "She didn't seem thrilled about the flickering lights, miss," he said.

"Detective, not miss," Weiss corrected softly. The officer seemed not to notice and motioned vaguely to the fluorescent bulbs recessed in the ceiling.

"She claimed these were giving her a headache. She probably stepped outside for a few minutes." He returned his hands to his hips and blew a bubble with his gum. Weiss grimaced as the bubble popped, the sickly sweet smell of sugar mixing with the smells of the room. "What's the rush, anyway? It's just one less Fanger," he said, using the derogatory term for a member of the notorious gang. "No one will miss him. If anything, we should thank whoever did it for helping take out the trash."

Ruby stood and shook her head. "That's enough, Jim," she said, sterner than Weiss had yet heard her speak. "We don't get to decide who we help and who we don't. Whatever this Faunus' history, he's a citizen of Vale, and it's our job to protect them. Weiss," she said, turning to her partner quickly, causing her long red cape to furl with the sudden movement, "I'm going to go outside to find the M.E. You look around in here, try to find his scroll, a calendar, a journal. Anything that might tell us what he was up to last night, whether or not he was meeting with anyone, the whole deal. Looking around, I doubt he had anything worth stealing. We'll probably have to find some other motive for the murder besides a B&E gone wrong."

"Yes, ma'am," Weiss muttered sarcastically as Rose stalked out of the crime scene, intent on looking for the medical examiner. "Whoever made you the boss?" She looked around the messy apartment. _It's not going to be easy to find anything here,_ she thought. It seemed as if the victim had decided there was a place for everything…and that place was everywhere it wasn't already. Dirty dishes filled the sink and overflowed onto the counter; laundry was thrown onto the backs of the couch; junk mail was tossed near, but not into, the garbage can and piled high on the desk. But above it all, there was the smell.

Detective Rose had not been lying about the smell.

Weiss looked over her shoulder as she pulled on her own pair of gloves, listening once again to the varied conversations playing out around her. Just like back at the station, the officers here seemed…unconcerned? oblivious? unbothered? She wasn't sure how she would describe their attitude towards the body, twisted and broken, laying on the floor only feet away, but it was not one of rapt attention. Rather, it was one of grim acceptance. _Has murder, has crime, become so commonplace to them that they can so easily ignore it?_ she asked herself, making her way to the couch. She began to feel around, behind, and underneath the cushions, trying to find the Faunus' scroll. _Winter never mentioned anything like that happening to her, but is that because I've never bothered to ask? Is that what will happen to me in two years, or one, or six months?_ She had never thought of herself as one who wore her emotions on her sleeve, but the thought of losing what little she did have frightened her. Her father had made it clear to her that she had little enough to offer the world as she was now; she could ill afford to leave more of herself behind in what her family had deemed a fool's errand.

She grimaced in disgust as her hands wrapped around something wet, and she withdrew a takeout box from a noodle store down the street. She cautiously sniffed the contents. _They're not spoiled yet, so they can't be more than a day or two old. Maybe they're what he had for dinner last night?_ She placed it on the floor by her foot and reached in again, thoroughly checking the couch and, after finishing, the armchair as well. _Nothing,_ she thought, upset that she had to dirty her hands for so little.

She stood and looked around the apartment, trying to decide where to look next. There was a small desk over by one of the windows, covered in a mess of bills and other mail. _Maybe something there will help,_ she thought, and headed over.

* * *

"Nora, come on, you can't stay out here forever. This is your job." Ruby was pulling on Nora's arm, trying to drag her out of her van and back into the apartment. She was having about as much success as if she was pulling against a team of oxen.

"No you don't, Ruby, not as long as those lights are flickering like that. I don't trust them." The young police doctor's high-pitched voice came out of a mouth wearing one of the widest grins Ruby had ever seen. At least some of the rumors about the resident doctor were true, then- the girl loved to get physical.

"This from the girl that used to go around sticking her tongue in electrical outlets…" Ruby said, her breathing heavy as she decided to let go of Nora's arm and instead reached for her scroll, pulling it out of her coat pocket.

Nora stuck out the aforementioned tongue. "Exactly, Ruby, I know a thing or two about bad electricity. I'm not going in there, and that's final!"

Ruby finished dialing and held the scroll up to her ear. "Well, that's fine, I guess. I can't force you to do anything, that much is obvious." Then, as if an afterthought, "By the way, do you want me to say hello for you?"

The question stopped the giggling Nora in her tracks. "Ruby, who are you calling?" The defiant resolve and the grin fled Nora's face. "Ruby, who's on the phone?"

Ruby covered the mouthpiece, even though no one had picked up yet. _It's almost better if he doesn't. I don't need the call to actually go through for this gambit to work_. "I'm calling Ren. I figured he'd want to hear about this. You want to say hi?"

"No no no, I'm going! You don't need to tell him anything about this! Rather, just tell him how quick I work! That'll work too!" Nora leapt out of the van and ran back into the apartment building, calling with her hands for her assistants to bring the stretcher. They gamely followed after their boss, intimately familiar with her frequent antics.

Ruby smiled and put her phone away. _Glynda might think that I'm just a rookie, but I've had six months of hanging around the station listening to the detectives talk, and a lifetime of stories from my father and uncle. I've picked up on a few of their tricks already._ Nora, for instance, was hopelessly in love with Lie Ren. Ruby had only met the paramedic once, and he hadn't said much, but she got the feeling he was a professional through and through who didn't have time for foolishness. So if you were to threaten telling him about Nora's lack of a work ethic, it'd be an easy way to get her to listen.

Ruby made her way back inside, moving her sunglasses to the top of her head. _What would the detectives do next?_ she asked herself. They would listen to Nora as she gave them a rough cause and time of death, check his pockets for any belongings, canvass the area for any witnesses who might have seen or heard something, wait for the forensics team to complete their examination of the room…In her mind, it was all an easy, smooth process, one that had been tested and refined over years of use. In practice, Ruby was worried that it would be much harder than it first looked. _If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and the criminal would always be caught._ Ruby knew the unpleasant truth. Nearly half, a good forty percent, of all murders went unsolved in Vale.

She once again entered the apartment, looking around to find her partner. _I hope that she didn't mess anything up._ Was it unfair of her to assume the worst about Weiss? To have passed the tests, she would have to have some measure of skill and a double measure of knowledge. _Am I just believing the worst because of how we first met?_ Ruby liked to think of herself as a positive person. Not as positive as her sister- Yang was the most relentlessly upbeat person Ruby knew, even more so than Nora- but still, Ruby thought she saw the best in every situation. Her brief time with Weiss was already trying that assumption. Admitting that at least of a part of their run in could be blamed on herself was supposed to build a bridge between them. And maybe it had, to an extent. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough. She had heard the muttered sarcasm as she had left the room. There was still time to improve, though. The situation wasn't hopeless yet. "You find anything yet, Weissy?" she asked as she walked over to where Weiss was standing, hunched over a small desk.

"Do not call me that again…and yes, I think so. There was some takeout stuffed into the couch, from a place I saw as we drove here. It might be worth it to check with them, see if they remember him with anyone. It hasn't spoiled yet, so it can't be more than a day or two old."

Ruby pulled out a notepad and scribbled down a reminder. "Yeah, that might be something…What about the computer?" she asked, pointing with the butt end of her pen. She looked around the apartment. "Looks a little too new, a little too expensive, for a place like this, don't 'cha think?"

Weiss nodded. "That was exactly what I thought, once I uncovered it. He had a whole six days' worth of mail stacked on it."

"Six days' worth?" Ruby asked, her eyes continuing to roam around the apartment. She put the pen in her mouth and began to chew on it. "That's oddly specific."

"The mail on top was from the fifteenth," Weiss explained, pointing to the postmarks. "The ones on the bottom were from yesterday. So six days' worth." She moved to stand near the window, parting the dusty curtains and peering down onto the street. "Now, can we focus on the important thing here? I think we should make sure the forensics team takes it back with them to examine it. Maybe the victim was involved in some form of wire or computer fraud."

Ruby shook her head, but dutifully scribbled it down in her notebook. "If he was, he wasn't very successful at it. People with money don't live here. I take it you didn't find his scroll?"

"No. Maybe he has it in one of his pockets."

"Nope!" Nora called out, standing and waving her assistants over. They lowered their stretcher to the ground and began to move him onto it, preparing to transport him to the morgue. "He doesn't have anything on him. Now, I'll have more for you after the full autopsy, but for now I'd put time of death about eight hours ago, sometime between one and two this morning. You probably saw the slit throat, and I'm calling that the cause of death for now, but the Faunus had a lot of bruises too. Someone beat him pretty badly."

"Do you have a time for that?" Weiss asked.

Nora shook her head. "I don't even want to guess at it without knowing more. But it's been a somewhat slow week for business; I'll ride with him back to the morgue and get started right away. Three, four hours and I'll have some more answers for you."

Ruby thanked her as she left, Weiss already moving into the kitchen. She rifled through a few of the cabinets, then sighed. "This place is a mess."

Ruby joined her, thumbing through the trash on the table. "I don't think there's anything else here, Weiss. That just leaves the bedroom and the bathroom. Which one do you want?"

The white-haired girl looked upset at the choice. "Bedroom."

* * *

"Who lives here?"

Weiss looked at the list the building superintendent had given them. "Flora Bole."

"And this is the last one?"

"Yes. Apartment 3B, Flora Bole."

"What do you want to bet are the chances that she didn't see or hear anything, either?"

"People don't just drop dead of a slit throat, Detective Rose. There must have been some noise. And someone must have heard it."

Ruby paused, her knuckles mere inches from the doorframe. "Weiss, do you know where we are?" she asked, furrowing her brow and biting her tongue slightly.

Weiss shrugged. "The Salmagundi."

Ruby pulled her hand away from the door and turned to fully face her partner. "Weiss, you don't know anything about this city do you?"

"Why would I need to know about the city?" she asked, folding the list of names and slipping it into a pocket in her coat. "A GPS can direct me to any crime scene that we're assigned too, so I don't need to know my way around." _I've also only lived here for a few days. Am I expected to win first prize in a trivia contest?_

"Weiss, you're right, this is the Salmagundi District. This is probably the poorest, most roughshod, hard-hit community of Faunus immigrants this side of Mountain Glenn. These people here? They don't walk around with their heads held high because they don't know and they don't want to know what the humans might be dropping on them. They're lucky to have food to eat each day, let alone a place to stay or a job. You think any of them want to risk rocking the boat by sticking their nose in their neighbors' business? They don't. Add to that the fact this area is right in the middle of the White Fang's territory, and we're lucky as many answered the door as they did. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. That's the motto they live by. That goes double when it comes to the police."

"Don't they know that we're here to help them, though?" Weiss countered.

Ruby knocked on the door. She sighed. "I know that, and you know that. But them? They don't, and who can blame them? They only ever see detectives when there's trouble. We don't come around giving out medals for good citizenship. If we're here, it's probably because someone they love was murdered, or someone they love murdered." Ruby seemed ready to continue her speech, but a frail voice came through the door.

«Кто это?»

"What did she say?" Weiss asked. She had never learned Menagerie, even as a way to rebel against her father's authority. To her family, and to her, Faunus were only labor.

Ruby shrugged, not understanding either, and turned away from Weiss to focus on the door as she heard movement behind it. "Excuse us, Ms. Bole, but we're with the VPD," she said, holding her badge up to the peephole. "You're not in any trouble, we'd just like to ask you if you heard anything suspicious last night."

There was further movement behind the door, and Weiss began to reach for her weapon. Ruby lowered a hand to and stopped her, whispering, "What are you doing? We're just here to ask questions. We don't want to escalate things." Louder, she repeated her earlier message. "Ms. Bole, we'd just like to ask you a few questions about last night."

The door handle began to turn, and the door opened a crack before being stopped as the door chain pulled taught. They could just see the right side of an older woman's face through the narrow opening. «Что это?»

"Ms. Bole, do you speak Common?" Ruby asked, still holding her badge in clear sight. The woman behind the door shook her head, looking behind her into the apartment and calling out. There was more noise inside, and Weiss moved where she was standing to try and see inside clearer. She couldn't.

«Мама, что это?»A younger voice came through the door, and Weiss was just able to see the speaker. The older woman began to move her hands as she explained why she had called out. There was the noise of more movement, and the door shut briefly before the chain was slid from its place, allowing it to open fully. A young woman stood there, a bathrobe pulled tight around herself, a worried look on her face. An older woman stood several feet behind her, her confusion evident on her face.

"Can I help you?" the younger asked nervously. Her short, triangular auburn ears were pressed back against her head. _She's nervous about something,_ Weiss thought. She began to look past her, into the apartment, trying to see anything suspicious inside, anything to explain the Faunus' body language.

"We're sorry for interrupting you," Ruby was saying in the background, mostly ignored by Weiss as she focused on the room. "We're asking everyone in the building if they heard or saw anything late last night or early this morning."

The woman pulled her robe tighter around herself, looking even more uncomfortable. "No. Can you tell me what this is about?"

"There was a murder on the floor below you last night. You must have heard something," Weiss said directly. _This is not the time to mince words, Rose. We need to wade right in, throw her off balance, and strike while we can._ Their approach with the other tenants of the building had been on Ruby's terms; polite, cordial conversation. The same approach that Weiss had on several occasions noted as being ineffective and naïve.

The woman looked shocked, her ears rippling on her head. "Oh my, that is terrible. Who was it?"

"Daff Sal. He lives on the second floor, in the apartment below yours. Now, did you hear anything?" Weiss was still forward with her words, not softening the blow in any way.

The Faunus was about to speak when she was interrupted by the older one, who clearly wanted to know what was going on. She hadn't taken her eyes from Weiss since the door had opened, but now she was shouting at the younger fox Faunus. _She recognizes me,_ Weiss realized. _She sees my hair; she knows my family._ Several times now Weiss had considered dying her long white hair, but had always decided against it. _I will turn it into a badge of honor, not a sign of ill-repute,_ she vowed.

Ruby and Weiss took the time to look around the apartment, trying to see if there was anything that stood out to them. Compared to the victim's apartment, the one they were in now was immaculate and in far better condition than the rest of the building. Weiss nodded approvingly, glad to see that these few Faunus at least cared for the condition of their rooming. "Detective Rose, what do we do now?" she whispered to her partner. The two Faunus were still yelling at each other, clearly in the middle of an argument. "Do you understand any of what they're saying?"

"No. I only know how to say hello and a few curse words," Ruby admitted, whispering back. "That's all my uncle ever taught me. My last unit, the SPU, had a Faunus, but she's third generation and doesn't know very much herself, so she couldn't teach us even if she had wanted to."

"So what do we do with this?" Weiss was uneasy about the situation she found herself in. "Should we arrest both of them for causing a disturbance or something like that?" Once again she lowered her hand to her weapon, while mentally steeling herself for action.

"No! We're not arresting them! For now, we just stand here?" she asked, not sounding very confident in her answer. "I think?"

"Okay." There wasn't anything else to say, but at least the argument seemed to be winding down. The older Faunus threw up her hands and marched off down the hallway towards what Weiss assumed was her bedroom, her long tail twitching from side to side, likely in anger. _Certainly the mother,_ Weiss thought. _Both of them are fox Faunus._

"I am sorry for that," the daughter was saying, her words thickly accented but understandable. "My mother, she does not speak Common, and she assumed worst when she saw your badge. She demanded to know what I might have done to warrant a visit. I tried to tell her that I have done nothing, but she asked then why you were here. I had not heart to tell her that our neighbor died."

Ruby let out a nervous chuckle. "We understand, Ms. Bole. I'm Detective Ruby Rose, this is my partner Weiss Schnee. As I said, we're asking for anything you might have noticed last night, no matter how small. Were there any loud noises? Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around the building? Any cars parked outside that didn't seem to belong?"

The woman looked away, pulling her robe even tighter around herself. _At some point she's not going to be able to breath,_ Weiss thought, _not if she keeps up her pace like that._ "I'm sorry, Detectives, but I was…working…last night, so I don't see how I could help in any way."

 _Hesitation over what she was doing last night,_ Weiss noted. _We'll have to come back to that._ Ruby, though, seemed to ignore it, asking, "Would your mother have noticed anything?"

"She was asleep," the woman answered quickly.

Ruby looked over at Weiss, clearly noticing the speed of the woman's response. _So she isn't entirely ignorant of what the woman is and is not telling us._ Was it fair of her to assume the worst regarding her partner? _She's a detective, just like I am. She must have proven herself capable somehow._ Again, though, Ruby chose to ignore the potential weakness in the Faunus' testimony. "That's alright, Ms. Bole. But are you sure? Anything, no matter how small, may be able to help us. Anything," Ruby said, trying to keep her voice calm and reassuring.

"I do not know anything, Detectives. Thank you for your time." She tried to lead them to the door, shooing them out of the apartment. Ruby only barely managed to force a contact card into her hand before she shut the door behind them immediately, and they heard the sound of the door's multiple locks being turned.

Weiss and Ruby looked at each other. "Well, that went well," Weiss said. She looked down at the notebook she held, the page nearly devoid of ink. "Where to next? We should probably return to the station and see what the autopsy revealed, and if the forensics team was able to uncover anything in their in-depth look that we might have missed just looking at the surface."

Ruby looked at her scroll, checking the time. "Nora won't have finished the autopsy yet, so no sense in returning now. I think we should just continue asking around. We can work our way down the street until we get to the noodle bar. Maybe the shopkeeper can tell us something about our victim. No one else seems to know him."

"Didn't you say that the people here wouldn't talk to us?"

"That doesn't mean we don't have to try, at least. Even if they don't want help, we're here to give it."

"You're wrong. If they're not willing to talk to us, we shouldn't waste our time with them. We can solve this without their help. We return to the station."

"Weiss, I'm telling you that they won't have anything for us there yet. And the people around here might."

"Whatever. I'm getting in the car and driving to the station. You can either come with me, or not. We'll see who solves this first." Weiss walked away, leaving Ruby behind in the hallway. She could faintly hear the girl say something quietly behind her, likely a complaint, but Weiss didn't pay attention. _If she wanted to say something, she should speak up and say it._

Alone, she walked down the three flights of stairs and sat behind the wheel of the police SUV. She looked at the apartment building, wondering if Ruby would come with her. She didn't see her. _Oh well,_ Weiss thought. _So much for us being partners._ She reached for the ignition.

* * *

" _We're supposed to be partners."_ Maybe if she had spoken up, Weiss wouldn't have left her alone. Maybe if she _hadn't_ spoken up about how the Fuanus didn't trust the police, Weiss wouldn't have left her alone. _Damned because I did, damned because I didn't. Isn't it great how the world works sometimes?_

She stood in the center of the crime scene, ignoring the dirty looks shot her way by the forensics team as they were forced to work around her. _Something here doesn't add up,_ she thought. She knew it. It wasn't based on experience- this was her first official case, after all. But it was a feeling in her gut just the same. _There is definitely something here that doesn't meet the eye._

She flipped open her notebookand looked at the few notes she had written down. There wasn't much, at least not yet. _Victim was in his mid-twenties. Probable cause of death: blood loss due to slit throat. Probable time of death: between one and two in the morning. Many bruises: possibly from a struggle? Expensive computer equipment, much nicer than rest of belongings. Used for wire/computer fraud? Leftover noodles in couch, possibly from the night of the murder._

She had told Weiss that they should check with the owner of the noodle bar. _Weiss herself suggested that we check out the restaurant,_ Ruby remembered. _So why did she leave me here?_ Ruby wasn't the greatest at reading other people, something her father had warned her would hurt her career if she wanted to be a detective. _I always told him that I'd be fine, or that I'm getting better. I guess that there's still a long way to go before I'm at the level he was._ She wished that she was more like Yang, easygoing and approachable, and always at ease with meeting new people. Yang wouldn't have let her partner leaver her. Yang would have found a way to make it work.

She turned and walked out of the crime scene, then the building itself. She thanked the officer who lifted the crime scene tape for her as she passed under it. She looked down the street, hoping that maybe, just maybe, Weiss had changed her mind, and hadn't left her. She was disappointed, but not surprised, to see that the SUV was no longer where she had parked it. _I'll have to take a walk back to the station, then._ She could call a taxi, or ask on of the officers to drive her, but she wanted to be alone. She decided she'd interview anyone she saw as she walked down the street to A Simple Wok. She pulled her cloak tighter around herself, trying to shield her body from the chill as a sudden breeze picked up, the wind whipping around her and sapping her warmth. Winter was starting out colder than normal this year.

She kept her notebook and badge ready as she walked, talking with a few pedestrians as they passed by. Just as with the residents of the apartment building, all of them claimed to know nothing about anything. She left her contact information with all of them, not expecting them to ever call her. She had seen one throw her card away as soon as he walked past her.

 _No, Ruby, don't think like that. Admitting defeat before you've even began only means you won't fight when presented with difficulties._ No matter how many refused to help her, or truly couldn't help her, if even one of them was willing to take a chance and come forward, that would be enough. That would make it all worth it. _I can do this. I can._

For her mother.

"Excuse me, sir," she said as she opened the door to the takeout restaurant, happy to be inside and away from the cold winter air.

The old man behind the counter looked up at her as she entered. "We're not open yet, ma'am. Sorry." He went back to counting the money in the register.

Ruby looked at her watch. _It is still early, isn't it?_ She had assumed it was later in the day than it was. Instead, it had only been a half-hour since she had checked the time outside Ms. Bole's apartment. "That's okay, sir. I'm not here for lunch. I'm Detective Ruby Rose with the Vale Police Department. I'm wondering if you can tell me anything about this man." She held up a picture she had taken of the victim, the photo only capturing his face, not any of the unpleasantness that started at his neck. "He lives in a building down the street, and there were signs that he had been here within the last day or two. No one else I've asked has been able to say much about him one way or the other."

The old man squinted at the picture, then looked up at Ruby. She sensed he knew something, but was hesitant to speak. "Anything at all might be able to help us, no matter how small or inconsequential it seems to you."

"What happened to him?"

There wasn't any way Ruby could think of to sugar-coat the brutal truth. "I'm sorry to have to say this, sir, but he was murdered earlier this morning. Did you know him?"

"Murdered? Oh man, that's terrible." The man's face fell as he swallowed and sat down, then nodded. "Yeah, he is here all the time. Three, four days a week at least. Murdered? Really? What's this neighborhood coming too?" A shiver ran up the man's spine, and he hugged his arms tight around himself.

"Was he here last night?" Ruby asked, trying to draw something out of the shop owner. Finally, she had someone willing to talk to her. She didn't want to lose him to his own musings about better times or fear of the future.

"Yeah, he was. And no, he didn't act different. He seemed himself. Maybe a little happier than normal, but that's a good thing. It certainly wouldn't make me think it was related to something terrible happening to him."

"Happier than normal? Did he mention why? Perhaps he had come into some money?" The file the VPD had showed he had been a one-time member of the White Fang. If he had joined up with them again, and if he had been involved in a robbery, then perhaps someone had decided to get even with him.

"Money? As far as I know, he was fairly well off, at least for this area. Not living paycheck to paycheck, at least. I try not to pry into the finances of my customers. As long as they can pay, I'm happy. No, I think he was happy because he had a young woman here with him."

"A woman? A relative, you think? A friend? A date? How young?"

"Not a relative. She wasn't a Faunus. Probably around his age, but hard to tell. Very short, but dressed like an adult. Maybe a friend from work, but I'd put my money on a date. He was getting pretty handsy with her."

"What did she have to say about that?" Ruby asked as she took notes. _Maybe he got too touchy-feely, and she put a stop to it._

The man laughed, and stood. _He's gotten over the shock of hearing someone he knew died, that's good._ "She didn't have much to say about anything. She didn't even order for herself, he took care of that. Honestly, she'd have been frightening if it wasn't for how attractive she was. But I don't think his affection towards her was unwelcome, at least. Like I said, she didn't do anything to try to stop it."

 _So it's still a possibility that he tried to go too far with her, even if there weren't any signs of it here. He might not have been looking for them, or the victim could have gotten bolder after a drink with dinner._ "Do you know her name?"

The man shook his head. "Man didn't say it, I didn't ask, she didn't give it."

"Do you have any security cameras here?" Ruby asked. _Either way, this woman might know what happened to him._

The man pointed behind her. "I have them, but they're more for show than anything. They only save the last hour of footage. If you were hoping to use it to find her, then they won't help. They were in early last night, about five o'clock. I closed the shop at ten, so the footage of them would have been long since erased."

 _That's a setback,_ Ruby thought. She handed him one of the few remaining cards she had stored in her pocket. "Thank you for your help, sir. If you think of anything else, or if the woman you saw with him comes in here again, let me know, alright?"

"Detective Ruby Rose…" the man said, looking at the card. "Yeah, I'll do that, Detective. Good luck."

* * *

 _What would Winter do now?_ Weiss asked herself.

 _She certainly wouldn't just sit her and stare at her computer._

That was all Weiss had been doing for the last half-hour now, ever since her pride had demanded she return to the police station instead of working as part of a team. She had met with the overly talkative IT girl and set up an account to gain access to the VPD databases and search features, found her desk in the bullpen, sat down in the _extremely_ uncomfortable office chair, turned on the computer screen, and…

 _Nothing_. Since then, she had done _nothing_.

She debated with herself what to do next, crossing off each idea as it came to her. _Should I return to the crime scene?_ What would be the point? The forensics team was doing their thing, and her own basic search hadn't turned up anything. Going back would be useless right now. _Should I interview the owner of the noodle restaurant?_ No, Ruby had probably seized control of that lead and done it already. _Should I talk to the doctor, what's-her-name? The one with the crazy pink hair?_ No, she had made it clear that even without anything else to distract her it would be several hours before she had any results. _Should I go down to the IT department and ask if they've looked at the computer we asked to be brought back?_ No, the girl there was off, to put it politely. She didn't want to deal with her alone, even if the forensics team had sent the computer off to be analyzed already, which they probably hadn't.

 _Should I just give up and return to Atlas? To home?_

No. She wasn't going to give up this early.

 _Should I call Detective Rose, meet up with her, and make this work?_ Yes, that was the one idea that didn't have flaws associated with it. Weiss reached into her coat, drew out her scroll, opened her contact list, and saw the flaw. She didn't have her number. They had been so quick about investigating the scene that she had never bothered to take care of the basics. _Shoddy work so far, Weiss,_ she chastised herself _. You're off to a great start. You'll be lucky to last a week at this rate._

 _And then you'll have to crawl back crying to Father._

"Hey there, beautiful," a smooth voice said. "Haven't seen you around here before. You uh, you new here? The name's Arc. Jaune Arc." Weiss rolled her eyes as she looked up from the crack in the tile she had been focused on. Standing near her, leaning against one of the support pillars set in the floor, was an officer with shaggy blonde hair. He smiled at her, probably in his mind a charming one.

Weiss met the man's eyes. "Get lost," she said. She looked back down at the crack in the tile.

"I'm already lost," he said. "Lost in your eyes."

 _Smooth,_ Weiss thought sarcastically, _especially since I'm no longer looking at him_. "I'm not in the mood for this right now, Officer. I'm having a busy day."

"It doesn't look like it," Jaune said, standing and walking over to her. "But I'll tell you what, beautiful. You ever need a ride anywhere, don't hesitate to ask for me. Whenever you're ready to join team Jaune, I'll make sure there's an opening for you."

"Officer Arc, don't you have a patrol to be on?" Captain Goodwitch shouted down from where she stood at the balcony in front of her office.

"Yes, ma'am!" Jaune shouted, standing straight and saluting the woman above him. He ran off towards the garage.

"Detective Schnee, I didn't expect you back so soon. Please, come to my office. You can fill me in with what you've uncovered so far. I'm expecting great things from you, if you're back so soon. Bring your partner in with you."

 _Wonderful. Just grab Ruby and bring her with me._ "Maybe I should've visited the IT department again. I'd rather be talked at than talked to," Weiss mumbled. She pushed her chair away from her desk and stood, using her hands to straighten out her skirt. No sense in giving the captain any more ammunition to throw at her than she already had. Though, Weiss had to admit, the fault was her own. She was the one who had left Ruby, not the other way around. She was the one who left the scene without interviewing all the witnesses, not Ruby.

She walked up the stairs, a bit slower than she had earlier, allowing for the full heft of her mistakes to weigh upon her. Postponing, but not precluding, the inevitable. Eventually, soon, she would be in front of her captain's door, expected to make a report without any information. To update on a case she had let her pride prevent her from working.

 _Well, Weiss, time to face the music._ She knocked. The captain answered. She entered.

"So, tell me, what have you found so far?" Glynda was sitting behind her desk, filling out several different forms. She stopped when Weiss didn't answer right away, looking up at her in confusion. "Detective Schnee? Where's Detective Rose?" she asked.

"Not here, Captain. I'm sorry. We can start without her. The victim's name was Daff Sal, a Faunus with ties to the White Fang. He's spent a few years in Beacon for various lesser crimes, all gang-related but stopping short of murder. No violent crimes of any type, actually. Mostly petty theft and breaking and entering."

"Any current ties to the White Fang? What's his PO have to say about him?"

"I- We- haven't heard from him yet." _True enough, even if it's because I didn't think to call him._ "Time of death was the early hours of the morning, but the doctor won't have finished her autopsy yet, so we don't have anything more than that."

"Dr. Valkyrie does good work. She'll get back to you soon enough. There must have been some witnesses, then? Someone must have seen something solid, or else you'd still be out there looking for more."

"No, none of them claimed to have seen anything."

"I see…" Glynda said, returning to her paperwork. "Where's your partner, then?" she asked again.

"I uh, I don't know, Captain," Weiss said. "We had a disagreement about how to proceed, and I left her back at the crime scene."

"Detective Schnee, do you know why we assign detectives to work in pairs?" A rhetorical question, obviously, as she didn't give Weiss a chance to answer. "Two pairs of eyes are better than one, just as two brains are better than one. Everyone has their strengths and their weaknesses, and by working together you can build of your partner's strengths. You're meant to be a compliment to each other. Do you understand that? You have been given a wonderful secular education, Detective Schnee. And it shows in your transcripts. To graduate at the top of such an elite class is a testament to your knowledge, Detective. Your partner, Detective Rose, did not attend a formal academy. She might not recognize the chemical formula for trace evidence recovered at the scene off the top of her head; she might not be as familiar with hostage negotiations as you are. She won't have had the same training in conducting interrogations. However, what she has instead is a rich and storied family history of law enforcement, and six months' experience as a member of the SPU based right here in this precinct. She knows this city; she knows these people. That doesn't make her better than you- in my mind, you're both rookies and have no place being named detectives. Certainly I don't know why you were named to Homicide instead of starting off in Robbery or even Vice. Singularly, I don't think either of you are worthy of the badge you were given. But together, as partners, you might just become a whole. Something for this department, for this precinct, for _me_ , to be proud of." There was a knock at the door. "Come in," she called.

Ruby entered, smiling nervously as she shut the door behind her. "Sorry to interrupt, Captain, but I heard that you wanted to see Weiss and me."

The captain looked at her. "Yes, I did. But I have a feeling it can wait. I was just telling your partner that detectives work best as a team. I suggest that you exit my office, go down to your desks, compare the limited notes that you have at the moment, and come back to me as a team, not just today but for the rest of your careers as detectives here. Am I making myself clear?" She smiled as both Ruby and Weiss nodded. "Good. You're dismissed. Come back to me before the end of the day. That gives you about…oh, about five hours still."

Ruby and Weiss stood and exited the office, looking down at the floor and not each other.

* * *

"I'm…sorry about earlier," Weiss said. "It was rude of me to leave you alone like that, not to mention foolish. I won't do that again."

"I'm sorry that I told you the Faunus wouldn't talk to us. I shouldn't have made an assumption like that based on stereotypes."

"I shouldn't have let my own feelings about them color my judgement either," Weiss admitted. "I'm not normally one to give someone a second chance, but I'm hoping that you'll allow me to do so here. When we first met, I yelled at you for something that was in some small part my own fault. Then, when we were more properly introduced, I refused to shake your hand. Allow me to correct that now. Detective Rose, I'm Weiss Schnee." She held out her hand.

Ruby grabbed it immediately. "Wouldn't that make it a third chance, then?" she asked, shaking Weiss' hand enthusiastically.

A smile slowly made its way onto Weiss' face. "Don't start with me," she said, but her words lacked any real anger behind them.

"Weiss Schnee, I'm Ruby Rose. But you knew that already," Ruby said. "Though I guess I also knew your name already too, since you told me it earlier when you didn't shake my hand. Oh, I shouldn't have brought that up again. Though you just did, so maybe it's okay? Is it okay? I don't want to make you angry or anything. And please, just call me Ruby."

Weiss gave up trying to contain her smile, letting it grace her face fully. "Alright, I can try that. I'd say you can call me Weiss, but you've already been doing that, haven't you? So, how about a fourth chance…Ruby?" She said the name as if it were foreign to her. "Why don't you just give me your number, instead of your name? That way, when I need to get in touch with you, I can. Then I can give you mine, and we can count that as our first meeting."

"Of course!" Ruby reached into her coat. "This is my last one. My dad told me I'd use these, but he never told me that I'd go through them this quickly." She handed the contact card to Weiss.

"If it's your last one, I can give it back once I put your number in my scroll," Weiss said. "I don't want to leave you short."

"Nah, it's fine. I need more anyway. You can keep it as a memento of our first day together."

Weiss finished putting the number into her scroll, then put the card carefully into one of her jacket pockets. "Okay, Ruby, if you say so. If we're going to solve this, then we're going to solve it as partners. Now, then, because I left you I don't have anything new to add. That means I'm in your debt, at least for now. Have you uncovered anything?"

"Maybe," Ruby said, pulling out her notes. "I went to the noodle place, like you suggested…"

* * *

 _Next time, on Vale Confidential: -Chapter Three: The Suspect-_

Weiss: "'Young, attractive, short' doesn't give us much to work with. There are thousands of women in Vale who fit that description."

Bei: "I'm a forgiving man, Detective Schnee. I sat him down, talked with him one on one, man to man."

Ruby: "Tell me something I don't know, Nora."

Cinder: "Make the call."

* * *

 **A/N: Part Two:** Translation of what the elderly mother said "Who is it?" followed by "What is it?". That was then the same question the daughter asked her mother immediately afterward. I'll try to avoid the "Gratuitous Russian" TV trope by only putting it in situations I feel warrant it, such as an immigrant that never learned the language of his/her new home, and I'll have it spelled out properly using Russian, not just a transcription to English letters. I won't, for instance, just have Velvet or Blake running around saying "da" or "nyet" all the time.

-T.Y.


	5. Chapter 3: The Suspect

**Chapter Three: The Suspect**

 _Previously, on Vale Confidential:_

Weiss: "The victim's name was Daff Sal, a Faunus with ties to the White Fang. He's spent a few years in Beacon for various lesser crimes, all gang-related but stopping short of murder. No violent crimes of any type, actually. Mostly petty theft and breaking and entering."

(Sternly) Ruby: "We don't get to decide who we help and who we don't."

Salem: "I trust that you can wrap him around your pretty little finger."

* * *

"That isn't much to work with," Weiss said, trying to sit up straight in her chair again, a task she was beginning to think was impossible as the chair continued to lean backwards as soon as she thought she had her feet solidly set on the ground. She frowned at the annoyance as she tried to come up with a solution to the more pressing problem she was faced with. "Not much to work with at all."

Ruby let her feet rest on the floor, the friction causing her to stop her incessant spinning. "It isn't much, but it's something, and we'll have more soon. The question is, what do we start with?"

Weiss once more felt like she was falling. _This stupid chair,_ she swore to herself, fighting to sit up straight. Even if one didn't take into account it's tendency to lean backward, the chair was far from comfortable. There was a tear in the fabric back, allowing part of the wire mesh to poke through. _I swear, if this thing rips my jacket._ The left armrest was loose, wiggling violently with even the slightest pressure. And above it all, the constant feeling of tumbling backwards as the chair leaned back of its own accord. The distraction hindered her ability to concentrate, so she didn't answer the question immediately, tapping her fingers steadily on her chair's armrests, wincing as the movement shook her entire left arm, thinking. "I'd suggest we split up to cover more ground," she finally began, "but that didn't work so well the last time we tried it." She unconsciously shot a glance above them to Captain Goodwitch's office. _She made that very, very clear to us. On our own, we're nearly worthless to her and have no place here._ It hurt to have someone she was so sure she would immediately impress be so damning and critical, not just once but twice in the same day. She tried to remember it was for the best. _She didn't say I was hopeless, at least. She said that we still had a chance to make things right._ That was more confidence than her father ever showed. "We need to start over. I mean, look at our notes. They're terrible. They're full of holes. For instance, who found the body?"

Ruby pulled out her notebook, and Weiss resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she noticed for the first time the glitter and stickers- _stickers? What is she, five? -_ decorating the front cover. She made a mental note to herself to try and ensure Ruby never pulled that out again when dealing with witnesses. "I, uh, I don't know." Now it was Ruby who frowned as she realized that thought hadn't occurred to her. "We talked to everyone in the building. It must have been one of them, right?" She looked through her notebook, unable to find what wasn't there. "Maybe one of the first officers on the scene got the name. It was probably the building superintendent."

"Probably isn't good enough, Ruby," Weiss said, chastising her partner. She straightened up in her chair. "This should be an easy question, one of the first that we ask when we arrive on a scene. Who found the body? What were they doing in the victim's apartment?" _Though, to be fair, it isn't entirely her fault,_ Weiss admitted to herself. _I was there as well, and I didn't ask for who found it or how._ She let out a loud sigh, and continued in a slightly nicer tone."I don't mean to blame you entirely, Ruby. I've already proven that I'm at fault for some of ineptitudes as well. From now on, though, we need to do this right. We need to do this by the book. We go back to the crime scene. The forensics team should be finishing up their initial sweep soon, so we won't need to reexamine the crime scene ourselves unless they report something suspicious. What we can do is interview whoever found the body. What did they see? What did they hear? What made them go in? What was their relationship with the victim? These are all questions we should have asked already. The shopkeeper you talked to, the one who saw our victim last night. He said he saw a woman with him, right? You didn't get much of a description of her, though. 'Young, attractive, short' doesn't give us much to work with. There are thousands of women in Vale who fit that description."

Ruby snorted. _Was that her version of a laugh?_ Weiss asked herself. _God I hope not._ Ruby seemed like the type to laugh often, and that noise would be grating. "Including you," Ruby was saying. "Should I bring you down to the interrogation room, see where you were last night?" she joked. She made a show of writing Weiss' name in her garish notebook under the heading "Lead Suspects."

"Now is not the time for jokes, Ruby," Weiss said, her cheeks reddening at the unwelcome? unexpected? compliment. "Though now that you mention it, so do you," she said, throwing the joke back at Ruby. "Where were you last night?"

"Home?" Ruby said, laughing lightly. A bright, cheerful, innocent laugh. _Better than that snort, that's for sure._ That laugh wouldn't be so bad to hear on a daily basis.

Or even an hourly one. Maybe now was the time for jokes…

"You don't sound so sure of yourself, Miss Rose." Weiss switched on her desk lamp and swung it around to shine directly in Ruby's face. "You want to try that again?"

"Naw, I'm good," Ruby said, pushing the lamp out of her face. "But I think we each see the point. We don't know nearly enough yet, and that's because we haven't been doing our job properly. But we can change that." She jumped to her feet. "Alright, let's do this!" she cried, pumping her fist in the air. "Wait, Weiss, you didn't jump up with me. We're supposed to be doing this together."

"I didn't know I was supposed to," Weiss said. "Maybe next time."

Ruby looked at her suspiciously. "Do you mean that?"

"No." _Does she expect me to jump up and down all the time? Idiot…_

* * *

"Do you normally let yourself into your tenant's apartments?" Weiss asked. She crossed her arms, ignoring the disapproving look Ruby sent her. _You don't have to be so confrontational all of the time, Weiss._ Ruby wondered why Weiss was like that, why she was so needlessly defiant and aggressive. One of her father's sayings came back to her, one that she believed Weiss could benefit from. _You catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a gallon of vinegar._ Being cordial with potential witnesses should be second nature to Weiss. _Leave the bad cop routine for the interrogation room._

"When they're late on their rent, then yeah. I do. I need to make sure they're not destroying the place, bolting in the night and leaving me holding the bag. A vacant property doesn't make me any money, and a trashed one costs me." He pinched the first three fingers of his hand as he spoke, rubbing imaginary bills between them. "It's in their rent agreements. I can enter their apartments at any time if I deem it necessary. The same line is probably in both of yours. It's SOP."

"Had you ever had problems with Mr. Sal before?" Ruby asked, her tone noticeably more polite than Weiss'. _Lead by example,_ her father had told her. If Weiss sees that you can get at least as good, if not better, results as compared to her blunt approach, then maybe she would start to change her own approach. _Be the change you want to see in the world_.

Another of her father's sayings. Ruby had never thought of it before, but maybe he had a few too many. _The less you speak, the more people remember._ That was another one. Maybe he should have taken his own advice.

Mr. Bei stopped his work on the sink drain, and he pulled himself fully out from under it. He sat up, leaning his back against the cabinet for support. "No. Never. If I had to describe him, I couldn't. He didn't talk, didn't complain, didn't make a scene. When he first came here, he was late with his rent the first couple of months. Since then, I got a check on the first of every month, like clockwork. Which is how it's supposed to be."

"So you did have problems with him before," Weiss said, noticing his discrepancy and latching onto it like a beowolf. Ruby almost giggled at the comparison as she conjured up an image of a beowolf with long white hair in a pretty jacket driving a squad car. _No, stay focused,_ she urged herself. Still, that didn't stop her from slyly making a note on the last page of her notebook for later: _Beoweiss._

"I'm a forgiving man, Detective Schnee," Bei explained. "I sat him down, talked with him one on one, man to man. Told him he needed to get his act together, or he'd be thrown out on the street. I told him how hard it would be for a convict like him to find another place willing to look past his record, and that even though I knew finding work could be just as hard I had my own job to do, and that potentially meant evicting him if he was late one more time. Three strikes and he's out, I said. This was over a year ago. He hadn't been late on the rent since. Now as far as I was concerned, that was his past. That was erased. No problems." He set down his pipe wrench and wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. "But I'm only forgiving to a point, detectives. So when he forgot to put his check in the box three days ago, I did what I've been hired to do and investigated. I knocked, I didn't get an answer. I grabbed my keys, opened the door, let myself in, found him lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, and called the police. You're not that popular around here, you know."

"So I've been told," Weiss said, more to herself than the man. "So why'd you break tradition and call us?"

"You kidding me? I had a dead body in my building. I can ignore domestic squabbles; I can ignore fights in the street or the occasional gunshot in the middle of the night. Dead bodies are an entirely separate matter. That can't be ignored."

"And I'm sure that last night there were fights that you ignored?" Weiss asked.

"No," he said. He sighed, upset at the continued interruption to his work. "Look ladies, I told you just a few hours ago, the first time you interrupted me. I didn't hear anything last night. I didn't hear anything this morning. I had no reason to believe that I'd find Sal dead on his living room floor."

"You didn't give him much leeway, did you?" Weiss asked. "It's only the second."

"And rent's due the first, Detective. Like I said, he had two strikes already."

 _That answers one question, at least,_ Ruby thought. His body was found by the building superintendent because he hadn't paid his rent. _But why hadn't he?_ "He always paid his rent, you said? What did he do for work?" she asked.

"Dunno. Ask his babysitter down at the parole office. Don't you keep track of them once they've been let out? Now, do you have any other questions for me, or can I get back to work?"

Weiss looked at Ruby and shrugged. _I think we're good,_ it said. Ruby had to agree. They hadn't learned much, but every puzzle was made of small pieces that appear useless on their own. _Why would he be suddenly unable to make his rent payment?_ Ruby quickly ran through several potential scenarios. Money might be one of the oldest motivators for murder. _Gambling debts, loan sharks, upset business partners._ "No, Mr. Bei. Thank you very much for your help on this," she said. "We may need to ask you more as the investigation continues, but for now that should be all." She and Weiss headed towards the exit, a twist on an old adage running through her mind. _One question answered, two questions asked._ Sal was a model tenant for over a year. Why was he suddenly unable to pay his rent? And how was he murdered so brutally without making any noise?

* * *

"Welcome to the Noodle Palace, home of the mega-mighty-meaty-manicotti. What can I-oh, Detective Rose, I wasn't expecting you to see you again. We're open now, would you like some lunch? I offer a discount to our fine public defenders."

Weiss let her eyes wander over the small restaurant. It wasn't much to look at, with just a scattering of tables placed haphazardly against the walls, leaving the center of the floor open. It was clear that the majority of meals were taken to go, and Weiss didn't blame them for that. It looked clean, at least, but was certainly low-brow. All her life, Weiss had eaten at extravagant restaurants, with meals prepared by the most skilled chefs of Atlas. A single course at any of those probably cost more than the entire menu here.

"No, thank you very much. I was a little over-eager earlier today, and I left without asking some necessary questions. Do you have a few more minutes to spare?"

The older man looked around the empty restaurant and nodded. "Yes, yes, of course. I'm always willing to help. Assuming I have an answer for you, of course. But I already told you everything that I know."

"Of course," Ruby said. "Oh, by the way sir, this is Detective Weiss Schnee, my partner," she said, motioning behind her to Weiss. The man had been extending his hand towards Weiss, but stopped at the mention of her name.

"Schnee?" he asked, his eyebrows raised in recognition.

 _It had to happen eventually,_ Weiss thought. _I'm surprised that it took everyone this long._ She nodded, turning her attention away from the tacky 'artwork' gracing the walls. She had decided it was another reason to eat in the comfort of one's own home. _Who could eat a meal in peace with a print of dogs playing poker looming over them_? "Yes, and for your next question, also yes, as in those Schnees."

Ruby looked at her partner, confused. "'Those Schnees?'" she asked quietly.

 _Oh Ruby, you idiot,_ she thought. _How did you not recognize the most famous name in Remnant?_ "Later," was her reply. "Sir, you mentioned that Mr. Sal was in with a woman last night, one that you hadn't seen before. I've been told that you don't have any surveillance footage of her, which is unfortunate and would have been preferred, but in her haste Detective Rose didn't ask if you could describe the woman yourself. All she has down is that she was, and I'm quoting her notes here, if not you, 'very frightening and very attractive.' Do you have any more to add than just that?" She looked at the old man for an answer, pursing her lips slightly.

His response was to shrug his shoulders. "What can I say? People come in, people go, every day every week. I can try, but I doubt I can be that specific." He carefully sat at one of the stools arrayed around the counter, the height of the chair still allowing him to look the detectives in the eye.

"As I said last time, sir, every lit bit helps," Ruby said kindly, trying to encourage him.

He rubbed his chin as he thought. "Black hair, long, tied in twin tails. Not very tall- in fact, she was very short, maybe even shorter than the both of you, detectives. Green eyes. She was wearing a lot of black and white." He looked at them and offered a small smile. "I know, it isn't much. I'm sorry I can't be of more help. I didn't think it was important at the time, still don't really know if it is, and my memory isn't what it used to be."

Ruby and Weiss both dutifully wrote it down in their respective notebooks, taking no chances with the thoroughness of their investigation. "So short, black hair, green eyes?" Weiss asked, confirming what he had told them. Now they had a hair and eye color to go along with a height. In a city of two million, it wouldn't make it easy to find her, but it would make it easier. "You're sure about that?"

"Yeah. I remember the eyes especially, because while Sal dug through his wallet for his lein she looked at me and I could've sworn her eyes changed color when she blinked. But they were green. I gave her a second and then a third look, which she didn't seem to appreciate." He shivered. "Like I said, frightening. Anyway, it isn't every day you see someone with different colored eyes, especially one who doesn't look to be a Faunus, so I wanted to make sure of what I saw. But apparently it was just my imagination."

"All right," Ruby said, cheerful as ever. "Thank you so much."

* * *

"What next?" Ruby asked. They had been standing outside the restaurant in the cold for a few minutes, each silently considering what they had just learned from both of their witnesses. Ruby looked at and directed her question at Weiss, but seemed to be distracted more by what was happening behind her than the answer to her question.

"We call his parole officer. He served time at Beacon, right? He should have to check in with someone at least once a week. Maybe the building superintendent was right and he'll know more about what he was doing for work, whether or not he had truly left his old associates behind and was walking the straight and narrow or if he was still active with the White Fang. I don't have any numbers in my phone, though." Weiss pulled her scroll out and looked through it. "Actually, the only ones I have right now are yours and my sister's. Ruby, you've been here longer than me. Do you have any of them? Ruby? Ruby?" Weiss turned to see her partner paying her no attention. "Hello, Ruby?" Weiss asked, waving her hand in front of her eyes. "Ruby, when someone asks you a question, it's impolite to just-"

The younger detective didn't answer, slapping Weiss' hand out of her face and sprinting forward, pushing off with her right foot and dashing down the sidewalk. "Hey!" Weiss shouted as she turned, already upset that Ruby had been ignoring her even before the slap. _I knew that she was good-for-nothing the minute she ran into me this morning! I've been wasting my time being kind to her._ "Ruby!" Ruby still didn't answer, running down the sidewalk as fast as she could before placing one foot against the brick of the building and using it as a springboard to launch herself out into the street. "Ruby!" Weiss shouted, concerned for her partner as she flew in front of a passing truck, tackling a child that had apparently frozen in place in the middle of the street through fear.

Ruby clutched at her left knee temporarily before using both hands to pick up the small child that she had rescued, holding him tight against her chest. "Are you okay?" Weiss heard Ruby ask, as she herself ran across the road to stand by her partner.

"Ruby, are you okay?" she asked. She offered her hand to help Ruby stand up, an outward sign of her repentance at once again assuming the worst of her partner.

Ruby smiled. "I'm fine, Weiss. I banged my knee against the pavement pretty hard, but it was worth it." She ran her fingers through the young boy's long auburn hair and rubbed his short ears. "Are you okay?" she asked him again. He looked up at her and nodded, too shy or too scared to speak. "You're fine now, it's okay," she said, trying to reassure him. She stood up, still holding the boy tightly.

"Do you think he lives around here?" Weiss asked, looking around and not seeing any concerned parents. "Who would let their son run around on their own in this neighborhood?"

"Didn't you ever run around as a kid, Weiss?" Ruby asked, looking at her over the boy's shoulder. "Where do you live, little guy?"

The child pointed down the street as he tried to untangle himself from Ruby's bear hug. "Don't be like that," she said softly. "It's okay now. Take my hand and you can have two pretty detectives walk you home." _Was that really supposed to be a selling point, Ruby?_ The boy, finally having freed himself, pushed away her outstretched hand and ran off on his own, this time keeping to the safety of the sidewalk. "You watch yourself now, kid!" Ruby shouted after him. "And look both ways before crossing the street!" The child stopped and turned, sending them a shy wave, before crossing through a fenced-in playground and disappearing from sight.

"It's a good thing you run, isn't it?" Weiss asked as they began to walk down the street in the opposite direction towards their parked car. "And that you were paying attention."

"If the positions we were standing in were reversed, I'm sure you would have done the exact same. What time do you have now, Weiss?" Ruby asked, looking at her scroll and minimizing the praise.

Weiss gave Ruby a strange look before indulging her and looking down at her own. "Three o'clock. Why?"

"This damn thing is always running slow. I can never trust what it says." She fiddled with it, likely resetting the time. "We've re-interviewed the building superintendent who found the body and got a description of a woman known to be with our victim just before he died." Her scroll chimed, her lips moving as she read the message to herself. "And that's Nora saying she finished the autopsy on our vic. What do you say we check in with her, see what else she can tell us?" She nudged Weiss in the side. "We're making progress now, aren't we? We'll have all sorts of stuff to report to Captain Goodwitch. What were you worried about?"

Weiss glared at Ruby. "Don't pretend I was the only one concerned. I have the utmost confidence in my abilities." Ruby muttered something, but Weiss couldn't make it out. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"Nothing," Ruby said as they reached the car. "I call driving!"

* * *

"Tell us you have good news, Nora," Ruby said as she pushed open the double doors of the morgue. "Tell us you've solved the case for us and we can go home early."

"Would you really be happy if I did?" Nora asked, looking up from her desk where she was filling out paperwork. She stood and pulled on a new pair of gloves before walking over to the examination table. She moved the microphone dangling from the ceiling out of the way and pulled the covering off the dead body, revealing the body to the waist. It looked different now, cleaned up and washed. The dried blood around the neck had been wiped away, fully exposing the injury that had likely cut short his life. The lack of clothing fully revealed the extent of the bruising and the stitches in the shape of a T that sewed the body back together.

"It'd be a good start to our careers, at least," Weiss said, moving to stand near the feet of the corpse. "I have a feeling though that you don't have that much for us."

"I see why you're a detective, Detective," Nora said. She laughed at what she apparently considered a joke before picking up a clipboard with a printout of her dictated notes and results. "As I thought, cause of death was blood loss due to that nasty piece of work there," she said, pointing to the slit throat. "Whatever made it was sharp, as there's no sign of any tearing with the wound. A straight razor, maybe, or a box cutter, and not something crass like a piece of glass or a steak knife. The killer probably came prepared and had it with them. I can't measure the size of the knife because it was a cut, not a stab, but if you recover any knives I can try to test them against molds I made of the wound. Try only," she repeated, noticing Ruby's look of excitement. "I didn't notice anything unique about the wound, so a mold might not offer the detail you need to close your case. You'll need to make sure you have plenty of other evidence. There's no sign of any hesitation either, so whoever made it was very sure of themselves."

"You're saying that the killer has struck before?" Weiss asked. She didn't know what she wanted the answer to be. _A professional would be more exciting, and would cause others to notice me quicker. There would be more evidence from the other cases to work with. On the other hand, someone who has evaded detection so far would be harder to track, and practice makes perfect. First time murderers panic, make mistakes._

"No, I'm saying they didn't hesitate. Maybe they're practiced, maybe they were angry enough to not stop and think about what they were about to do, maybe they're psychotic."

"And what about the bruises you mentioned?" Ruby asked, pointing at them with her pen. "They're much more noticeable now than at the crime scene. Were you able to come up with a time for them? And do you stand by your initial time of death?"

"Yes to the third, yes to the second, and where to begin with the first? Time of death was definitely between one and two o'clock, probably closer to one. Despite what movies you've seen, Ruby, I can't give you a time down to the minute. The bruises were all recent, from the hours just before death. Someone beat him, badly, for hours before putting him out of his misery."

"Why didn't his Aura protect him? Surely someone active in a gang would have had it unlocked, right? Shouldn't it have prevented bruises?" Ruby asked, writing down the answers she had just been given.

"It would, for a little while. Whoever did this went to town on this man. They stopped short of breaking any bones, somehow, but that's the only thing they didn't do."

"No broken bones? Is that strange?"

"I know the first thing I would've done would be to break his legs. If you want to cause pain, that'll do it, and if you want to get him talking, it'll do that too. Plus, he can't run away after that." Weiss and Ruby both looked up sharply at that comment and frowned at the doctor.

"Nora, are you okay?" Ruby asked cautiously.

"Of course." She passed her notes over the body to Ruby, who began to flip through them. "Even without broken bones, he was definitely in serious pain before the end."

"What did they use as a weapon? Their fists? A bat? A chair?" Weiss asked, leaning in over the body and holding her hand up to some of the wounds to note their size. One was larger than her fist, directly over his gang tattoo above his heart.

"All of the above, probably. The damage is too extensive to single any one instrument out, but I see evidence of fists, a cylindrical object of some sort, like a pipe or a bat, and several boot prints. Whoever did this either had a personal history with him, or wanted to send a message."

"Can you tell us the size of the prints?" Ruby asked. _Good question,_ Weiss thought. _If it was the girl he was with, they'd be small._

"Sorry, wish I could. There's just too much there to isolate any one thing."

"Is there any sign he put up a fight?" Weiss asked. _If he_ didn't _put up a fight, was it because he was surprised by the attackers? Or did he know them, and was just surprised by the attack?_

Nora lifted one of the man's arms and went through his fingers one by one. "It doesn't seem like it, but just in case I checked each of these for any DNA that may have been transferred if he was able to scratch or punch. I also made sure to swab the inside of his mouth and around his genitals. You never know what he might have gotten up to in the hours before his death. I've already sent those off to the lab for analysis. I even marked it as Urgent to try and move it up their chain, just for you, Ruby," Nora said with a wink. "Maybe next time you talk to Ren you can mention that for me? How I helped you out?" she asked hopefully.

"Maybe," Ruby said as she handed back the clipboard. "Is there anything else that isn't in here? Tell me something I don't know, Nora. Don't hold anything back."

"Well, there was one thing," she said hesitantly. "There was some ink on the index fingers of both hands. It's just innocuous enough to not make it into the official report, but I can't shake the feeling that it's strange. Why on both hands? Why on just the index fingers? If I accidentally smudge anything when writing, it's probably with my thumb."

Weiss left off her own informal measuring of the bruises and gingerly took the dead man's hand in her own, studying the fingers Nora had mentioned. Just as she had said, only the index fingers had ink on them. "Thank you," she said, finishing up with recording what Nora had just told them in her notebook. "Ruby, you have anything else to ask?"

"No, I think that covers it," she said, as she also finished writing her notes. Seeing Nora's strange look, she explained further. "We had a bit of a slow start. We decided to always make sure we voice our opinions so as to make sure we cover all of our bases, and both record everything so as to make sure we don't miss anything. We've already had to retrace a couple of our steps, and we don't want to have to do it again."

"Whatever works, I suppose," Nora said, stripping off her gloves and throwing them into the hazardous waste bin. "Good luck, detectives. I'm rooting for you."

* * *

"So have we solved any pieces to the puzzle?" Weiss asked, leaning back in her chair. _Until I figure out how to lock this thing in the upright position, I might as well steer into the curve._ Still, she couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling that came with sitting in a more casual, relaxed fashion.

"More, but still not enough. We still don't have a suspect or a motive."

"Hmm…and those are the two most important things to an investigation, aren't they? Knowing how he died, while informative, isn't the smoking gun we need." She tapped the fingers of her right hand on the surface of her desk.

"Weiss, weren't you listening to Nora? He died due to a slit throat, not a gunshot wound. Why would we look for a smoking gun? It probably wouldn't even be smoking now anyway."

"Ruby, I really hope you're not serious about that," Weiss said, her words muffled by the palm of her hand. She rubbed her temples and continued, "It's just a saying, Ruby. We're not looking for a literal gun; we're looking for that one key piece of evidence that will blow up this case wide open for us."

"If we want to blow it up, shouldn't we look for an air pump instead of a gun?" Ruby asked innocently.

 _Patience, Weiss. Maybe this is her way of thinking. You've already missed her intentions several times today and were too quick to judge her; don't make that same mistake again._ She pulled her hand away from her head and pointed it at her partner. "Okay, you're joking with me. That's obvious. You're a dolt, no doubt, but even you have to understand what we're talking about here. So I'm going to ignore your stupidity for now. Let's press on instead. We need to call his parole officer. Do you have the number for that department, or do I need to look it up in the system?"

"I don't have it, but I can find it," she answered, spinning her chair away from Weiss and beginning to work on her own computer. Within minutes, she grabbed her scroll and typed in the number.

"Is it ringing?" Weiss asked.

"Yes," Ruby answered, tilting the scoll's mouthpiece away from herself so it wouldn't pick up their conversation.

"Has he answered yet?"

"No, it's still ringing."

"What about now?"

"Still noth-Hello? This is Detective Ruby Rose, with the Vale Police Department. I'm calling for…let's see," she said, quickly looking at the screen again to get the name right. "I'm calling for John Stone. Is this him?"

"What's he saying?" Weiss whispered. "Put it on speaker." _Why did I even let her call?_ She resumed drumming her fingers against the metal desk, her pace quicker than before. _How long does it take for him to say hello?_

Ruby rolled her eyes at Weiss as she pulled the scroll away from her ear so Weiss could hear the voice coming through the speaker. "Yes, this is John Stone. Can I ask what this is about?"

"It's about one of your charges, if that's the right word, Daff Sal. He was found murdered in his apartment early this morning. We'd like to ask you a few questions about him."

"Oh God." There was a pause before the man came back on the line. "Damn. He seemed like a good one too, you know? Some guys get out, I don't know, they seem to miss prison. They don't ever check in, they keep in contact with their old crews, and before the week is through they're back in on one charge or another. Drug or dust possession, failure to keep away from old associates. We send patrol officers their latest mugshots as soon as they're released, and they've picked them up outside bars or buying weapons. Sal didn't do any of that. He kept himself clean for a year. He found a job, had an apartment. He didn't want to go back."

"About that job, Mr. Stone. Where did he work?"

"He was hired to work as a janitor or a custodian. I'm not sure about the difference between them. A cleaning company, anyway. I think it's one that's hired ex-cons before, knowing they can get away with paying them a little less. It was a full time job that paid part time, but he didn't complain too much. He understood how difficult it would be for him the first few years out."

"Do you have the name of the company? We'd like to check in with his supervisor and colleagues."

"Of course. I don't know it off the top of my head, but I'd be happy to email it to you as soon as I find it, Detective."

"As far as you know, then, Mr. Sal was no longer in contact with the White Fang?"

"No way. He hated his time in prison. Just about everyone else in there had blood on their hands, but Sal had never even mugged someone. He was a repeat offender, don't get me wrong, and I'm not going to make any excuses for the choices he made in life, but he was nonviolent. He might have been a part of their family, but to them he was a distant cousin at best. And from what he told me, that feeling was mutual. Coming out of prison he was quick to cut those ties."

"Thank you, Mr. Stone. You have my number now, please send me the name and address of the cleaning company as soon as you can."

"Of course, Detective. Please keep me informed as the case progresses. I understand if you can't tell me everything, but I want to know who did this just as badly as you do."

"Of course. Have a good day," Ruby said. She hung up the scroll and looked at her partner. "What do you think?" she asked Weiss.

"He's lying. That or he's bad at his job. Gang members aren't allowed to just quit, and most don't want to. Especially after a stint in prison. Did you notice how hesitant he was to answer any questions when he first came on the line? He was worried about something."

"Agreed, on both counts. Prison is basically their equivalent to a promotion. More respect, better jobs, a higher cut of the profits. And being paid as little as his PO claimed wouldn't allow him to keep on top of his rent and afford the computer he had at his apartment. Did that get sent down to the tech lab?" Her scroll buzzed and she looked at it to see a text with the name and address of Sal's employer. "He's quick to keep his word at least. We have an address for his employer. Still, it's too late in the day to go and visit them now. We'll have to go first thing tomorrow."

Weiss looked at the clock on the wall and was surprised to see that it was indeed almost five o'clock. "I think it's time for snap judgements. It's something they trained us to do at the Academy. We shout out everything we can and then sift through it right away. It's a way to put every possibility, no matter how extreme, on the table. What are the first impressions that we have here? I'll start. Someone he robbed in the past found out who he was and came back for revenge."

"He really did want out of the White Fang, but they said no and made an example of him for the others."

"His last job went off as planned but there was a disagreement over the shares each one received."

"He missed a payment to a loan shark," Ruby said.

"He was stepping out with someone else's girl."

"He got a little too handsy with his date, she snapped, lost control."

"He stepped on the toes of someone in a rival gang and they wanted to send a message to the White Fang."

"…"

"…"

"So I take it that's all we have for now. Do any of those actually seem plausible with the evidence we have?" Ruby asked.

"As much as I want us to find the girlfriend as a witness, and that should be one of our top priorities, I think we can rule her out as a suspect. Dr. Valkyrie was clear about the extent of the bruising. Would a female have been able to do that? Especially so since the forensics team said they found no evidence of anyone else at the scene- she would have needed to subdue him without a struggle. As scary and out of place as it was, the doctor's recommendation to break his legs to make it easier isn't without merit. It'd make someone otherwise too strong for her much easier to handle, but that isn't what happened. Second, throw in the fact that something like ninety percent of murders are committed by men, and it's not likely she was the one to do it."

"Ninety point five percent," Ruby corrected. "Until we see solid evidence Sal had committed a crime we can't spend too much effort trying to link him to either someone out for revenge or a disagreement amongst partners over the take. Still, we can add to our to do list that we should call down to someone at Robbery and ask if there have been any recent crimes that might fit his MO. He was sent to Beacon after a string of B&Es if I remember correctly."

"You do. If he really wanted out, they would've addressed that when he was first released a year ago. Waiting until now only goes against the message they would want to send. It'd tell their members it's permitted to think about leaving, so long as they do it quickly. Needing money from a loan shark is possible, I suppose, but they normally do break some legs first."

"Weren't you the one saying earlier now isn't the time for jokes?" Ruby asked with a slight smile. "Realistically then we're left with a rival gang wanting to send a message…I really hope it's not that."

"Are there many rival gangs?" Weiss asked. "The White Fang can't control the whole city, can they? There's always another fish in the pond, isn't there?"

Ruby sat forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists. "Nowadays there's only one real rival for them. Junior runs it out of his nightclub. They haven't fought for years now, but if they're trying to start a war, there's already a river of bad blood between them. It wouldn't take much to break the dam holding their tempers in check. We better hope that isn't what's behind this. Any of the other possibilities would be better than that. This city isn't prepared for a full-fledged gang war."

"Is that a possibility?" Weiss asked, unsure of the local politics or history.

"Unfortunately, yes, it is. Junior might not look like much, but he knows what he's doing, and he's managed to avoid any real disputes with the White Fang for the last few years."

"That's hard to believe."

"Well, Junior was born into the family, so it makes sense that he would have been trained early on in his life what to do. His nightclubs do well enough on their own that he doesn't need to take as many risks to pay his army of thugs. Add all of that to the fact that he's just smart enough to have never really been directly tied to anything, and his blood gives him some loyalty from the last few dons of the other families who view him as the last line of defense against the White Fang, and that's why he's still out there, even if the White Fang have driven off or absorbed nearly all of the smaller gangs."

Weiss was confused. "What? Why?" She blinked in confusion several times until she understood what Ruby was saying. "No, Ruby, I didn't mean it was hard to believe that Junior was in charge, or that he was good at what he does, I meant it was hard to believe they've gone years without fighting at all. That doesn't fit with what I understand about gangs. Aren't they always squabbling over territory? Border skirmishes and all that?"

Ruby threw up her hands and spun in her chair. "Well why didn't you say so?"

"I thought I was clear," Weiss said through gritted teeth.

"Well obviously you weren't," she sighed, exasperated. _What do you have to be irritated about? I'm the one who has to deal with you, not the other way around_. "Anyway, they haven't had much going on between them yet, but the tension has always there. Both know the other is their only real rival in terms of power and influence. How much do you know about the White Fang?"

"Not too much," Weiss admitted. "They're barely active in Atlas. Our police force has focused heavily on organized crime over the last decade, and we're smart enough to not let as many Faunus in as refugees."

"Okay. It sounds like you know the White Fang is made up exclusively of Faunus, and they're violent. Almost to the level of terrorists. They first showed up in Vale about five years ago, right at the peak of immigration from Menagerie, and they were quick to stake a claim to the Salmagundi."

"Where we were today," Weiss clarified.

"Yes. They killed a few of the local crime lords, merged their memberships, expanded into the neighboring areas, and went quiet for a little while. The VPD tried to find their leader, but weren't successful. At all. They were able to lock up a few of the foot soldiers, but none were willing to rat on their commanders. Like I said earlier, prison time is a rite of passage for them. They're barely considered full-fledged members until they've done it."

"'They went quiet for a while?' Are you saying they're not quiet now?"

"No. About two years ago, they began to expand again. Slowly, and not as brutal as before. But there was still some resistance that they eventually felt they had no choice but to crush, hard. That's when some of the older families began rallying around Junior, looking to the devil they knew instead of the new kids on the block."

"But Junior and the White Fang still haven't fought?"

"No. And that's why I'm praying that this crime wasn't on Junior's orders. If anyone with ties to him was involved, it's not that this could get out of control. It _will_ get out of control. It would be the spark that's needed to set off the whole powder keg." She looked up above them. "Come on. Captain Goodwitch asked us to fill her in before the end of the day. We still don't have much, but we have more than we did, and if there is even a chance of this breaking out into a gang war, she'll want to know about it now."

* * *

"Careful with that crate, Mercury," Cinder said, her voice icier than the air in the all-too-cold warehouse. She had a small brazier set up next to her, but it did little to heat the giant room they were standing in. "If anything is broken, you'll be the one paying for the replacement, and you'll be the one dealing with Roman." She was already being forced to work enough with that slimy thief. She didn't need to give him the satisfaction of crawling back to him every time something little went wrong. _I hate you, Salem._ She'd never say that aloud; she barely had the nerve to think it, but it was true. _You could have me work with literally anyone else and I'd be fine with it, but you had to make me go to him_. Their meeting had gone nearly exactly as she had expected, with Roman being as snide as ever despite the fact that _he_ was the one that had been played. _Seriously, how does he manage to turn everything to his advantage?_ Cinder promised herself that when this was done she'd do more than just abandon him. Like a bad penny, he would always turn up if she didn't try something new. She looked down at the plans spread out on the table before her. "In fact, why don't you just put it down over there and come here for a minute." She gestured to a corner of the run down warehouse and watched as he followed her instructions, gently placing the crate and its fragile contents down on the floor. "It's about time to move things forward. The police department have had all day to chase their tails, it's time we throw them a bone, don't you think? Have you practiced your delivery?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Emerald, who placed her own crate on the ground next to his. "He practiced, all right. You should've heard him all last night, Cinder," Emerald said. "'Call up her Father. Rouse him. Make after him, poison his delight, proclaim him in the streets. Incense her kinsmen, and, though he in a fertile climate dwell, plague him with flies. Though that his joy be joy yet throw such changes of vexation on't, as it may lose some color." She finished with a flourish and a deep bow, to light applause from Mercury.

"You see that, boss? I told you we should have her make the call. She's a natural, isn't she? She even sounds more like a man than I ever could," he said sarcastically, walking back towards Cinder.

Emerald moved to hit him as he passed her, but paused. "Do I sound like a man, or do you sound like a female?" she asked.

"Whichever keeps you from hitting me, Em," he responded easily, sitting on a crate near where Cinder stood. "You didn't applaud, boss," he said.

"Children, why do you test me?" she said, tracing an outline on the paper with her finger. "I'm not amused, or impressed," she stated. "Now, if you've quite finished, then perhaps we can move on from your senior play and onto the task at hand." She picked up a scroll from the table and handed it to Mercury. "There's only the one number in it, so it shouldn't be asking too much from you to dial it correctly. I trust that you'll stick to the script I've prepared for you, and not indulge in any immature antics" she said, sending a warning glare to Emerald, who shrunk back and crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing her shoulders for comfort at the rebuke. "It's important that you sound weak and frightened. You're sure you can do that?"

"Yes. There's a reason you pay me so much." He sounded insulted.

 _I certainly don't pay you to think,_ Cinder thought. Mercury had one purpose, for which he was highly skilled…but asking him to do anything outside of that focus was often more trouble than it was worth. She had doubts about his ability to sound convincing, but he was the only option. Emerald was much better suited to subterfuge, and she herself was much more cunning and able to adapt if the situation called for it, but the young detective had only had the occasion to speak to males as she had walked down the street. _It's possible that she wouldn't think too much about that, but I'd rather not take the risk._ She wouldn't allow anything to stand between her and her goal: Salem had left no doubt in her mind regarding the price for failure. "Then make the call," she ordered. He refrained from giving a snide reply as he dialed the number stored in the scroll. "Is it ringing?" Cinder asked.

"Yes."

"Has she answered yet?"

"No. It's still ringing."

"What about now?"

"I'm sorry, did you want to make the call?" he asked, before holding up a finger to silence her reply. "Hello?" he said into the scroll. "Is this Detective Ruby Rose, with the Vale Police Department? You stopped me on the street earlier, but I was too scared to tell you anything in public. If you can guarantee me that you won't call on me to testify on the stand, I know something that might help you. I saw someone flee the apartment building around the time that you said…"

* * *

 _Next time, on Vale Confidential: -Chapter Four: The Yards-_

(To Weiss) Ruby: "I knew that one of those cards would get results."

Pyrrah: "Read that last part back to me again. It didn't sound quite right."

(Annoyed) Weiss: "Get away."

(On the phone) Glynda: "They're making progress, Commissioner."

* * *

 **A/N:** To ensure credit goes where it is due, in case it went unrecognized Emerald is quoting from _Othello_.


End file.
